


Follow Me:  In Snapshots

by KTag12542



Series: Follow Me [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-02-27 12:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 26,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18738904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KTag12542/pseuds/KTag12542
Summary: A few of the things that happened next.(No Thanos, no Snap, no Endgame.)





	1. That Night

**Author's Note:**

> This will make more sense if you've read Follow Me Through, or at least the last chapter.
> 
> There will be no Thanos/Infinity War/Endgame. Let's try something else.

All of the abductees passed their medical checks with flying colors, which meant that there was no reason for them to occupy over a hundred hospital beds. Instead, the quarantine was spread across three local hotels.

Pepper found herself walking Tony to his room, even though her own was two floors down. He wasn't talking as rapidly as he had been when he'd first come through. In fact, his demeanor had taken a drastic swing in the other direction. In some ways, he was calmer than Pepper had ever seen him. Not only calm — at peace. As if some long-held private question had at last been answered.

But in other ways, he was being incredibly _weird_.

Case in point: he was touching things.

Not _pruriently_ , mind. Just very oddly. He was running his fingers along straight edges — door frames as they passed through them; the border of the panel of elevator buttons, again and again, on the ride up; the perimeter of the table that stood in the corridor. He stopped at the end of the hallway and spent far longer than anyone who wasn't a toddler or a cat should have spent tapping the glass of the window.

Pepper finally got him around the corner and down to his room. He watched her work the keycard like she was transmuting lead into gold.

"This is yours," Pepper said, redundantly. "You've had a long day. I'm sure you're tired."

"Actually, it was barely noon when we left," Tony said absently. He stepped past her and traced the wall plate of the light switch with gentle fingers. "If you want to come in for a bit…" He glanced her way, almost shyly. "If you want. Don't have to. We can talk tomorrow. Since apparently we're both stuck here."

Running on instinct, Pepper said, "No, I'd love to come in."

"Good." Tony flicked the switch and looked up in apparent surprise when the hallway light came on. "Amazing. It isn't even a plant."

"What?"

"The light. It's not a plant. Ours were plants. Every goddamned thing was plants. It was exhausting."

Before Pepper could come up with a response, Tony wandered down the short hallway and disappeared around the corner. A moment later:

" _Oh my god_."

She rushed after him. "What is it?"

Tony was lying face-down on the closer of the room's two queen-sized beds. "This mattress," he announced, mostly into the bedspread, "is _spectacular_."

"Okay?"

"Straw. That's what we had, Pepper. Bags stuffed with straw. It _poked_."

She rubbed her forehead. "Okay. Are you sure you don't want to get some sleep?"

"Nah, I'm fine. Pepper?"

"Yes, Tony?"

He picked himself up again and scrambled around to face her. "Pepper, do you have a carrot?"

"…What? No, not on me."

"Any apples? Celery?"

"No, I'm not carrying any produce. Would you like me to order room service?"

Tony slumped back on his elbows. "Room service. _Room_ service. God, I love this country."

"We're in Canada," she said.

"That's okay. I am capable of loving more than one country. _Room_ service," he said again. "Yes. Yes. I want… crunchy things. I want _steak_."

"You want a crunchy steak?"

"No, the steak doesn't have to be crunchy. I want there to be steak, and then a variety of crunchy things around it."

Pepper took a moment to translate that into a reasonable request, then crossed to the desk to use the phone.

Once the food was on its way, she turned back to discover that Tony was now on the second bed, sprawled on his back with arms and legs splayed like a little kid making a snow angel.

"Pepper," he said. "Pepper?"

" _Yes_ , Tony."

"I love you."

She froze.

"I love you," he said again, still addressing the ceiling. "Six hundred days, I didn't get to say it to your face. I had to make sure I got one more chance."

Her knees turned to water. "Tony…"

In a flash, he was sitting up again. "Look, I know, believe me, that we have a lot of things to work out. Or maybe you're done — no one could blame you for that, certainly not me — but I just wanted you to know. It's important to me that you know. I love you. Regardless."

"I love you too, Tony," she said. "It was never because I stopped."

Cautiously, Pepper sat down across from him on the unoccupied bed. Her hands clutched at the bedspread of their own accord, and she took a moment to calm herself.

Tony was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands loosely folded and his eyes fixed on her face. Pepper wished that she could make sense of his expression. The emotion in his eyes seemed to shift from one second to the next, from eager to cautious to nervous and back.

"It's weird for me, too," he said. "I was over there for so long. Now, it's… Earth again. Earth stuff. All these Earth people, all over the place." He chuckled. "I barely know what to do with myself. I'm afraid to close my eyes in case it all goes away." Then his mood turned on a dime again. His eyes lowered and his voice dropped. "Can I… tell you about it? I mean, do you want to hear what happened?"

Pepper drew a quick breath. She'd assumed that anything Tony might have experienced on the other side of the portal would simply disappear into the same mental vault where he kept all of his pains and fears.

"Yes, of course," she said quickly. "If you want to talk about it."

"I do," said Tony. "Well, some of it I don't, but…" He ducked his head and his hands worked at each other. "I want to be able to share things with you. If that's something you want. Not because I think you owe me anything, just—"

"Tony, I…" But she didn't know what she was supposed to say, or what she wanted to say. Conflicting emotions — many she couldn't even identify — constricted her throat and stung her eyes.

Tony swiftly crossed from one bed to the other. "Hey," he murmured. "It's okay. We don't have to figure it all out tonight."

She leaned against his shoulder and wiped her eyes. "I'm so sorry. This is ridiculous. You're the one who was abducted."

"Yeah. I also had twenty months to deal with it. You've had two days."

His hand moved in slow circles on her back, and she leaned into him a little harder. "Those two people who were chasing the portal — I think you met them, right before Champaign — they told us that on the other side was a… a slave labor camp. Is that…"

"Yeah. I— wow. Right back to the beginning. I'm trying to…" He exhaled slowly. "Can I start with the worst part first? Just to… you won't like this, okay? But it was a long time ago, and I promise I'm all right."

At her tentative nod, Tony turned around and pulled the back of his shirt up to his shoulders.

Pepper's hand came up to her mouth. His back… dear _god_.

"I was gonna have them removed," Tony said, "but then I got busy, my scar guy got busy, it was a whole— did I mention the dragon? I had a dragon. He had other things. It was complicated."

She couldn't… it was everything she'd feared. Every nightmare. Dozens upon dozens of scars, criss-crossing, overlapping… and she could feel hot tears on her face and she had to _stop_ that, _stop it_ , this was Tony's pain, not hers, she had to be strong for him but—

Then suddenly she found herself wrapped in his arms.

"I'm okay, honey," Tony murmured. "It's all right."

The sobs broke free and Tony held her close as she wept. The panic and despair of the last forty-eight hours seemed to pour out of her all at once, an unstoppable flood, and she clung to Tony like an anchor.

He gripped her just as tightly, and together they rode it out.

It felt like a very long time passed before her breathing began to settle. Tony's arms loosened a little, and one of his hands shifted to caress her hair.

(His shirt was pulled down again. She could just barely feel the scars through the fabric.)

Then he said, "I'd just like to take a moment to point out the personal growth here. A while back, I couldn't have possibly, you know, done _this_. To you. So obviously the alternative was to keep it all to myself and just… quietly go to pieces and leave you with no idea why. Sound familiar?"

Pepper lifted her head from his shoulder, and a glare made its way through the tears. "Hauntingly."

"Well."

Tony flashed her a quick grin, then reached back to snag the tissue box from the nightstand. They both took some time to clean up.

"I'm so sorry," Pepper said when she trusted her voice again. "For what you went through. That I couldn't be there to help."

"It was bad," Tony said quietly. "Awful. I can't pretend otherwise. But I wasn't alone, after. I found some friends. Maybe you heard the names — Kel and Jean."

Pepper nodded. "Peter and Kiran told me about them."

"Yeah. I'm not…" He scratched the back of his neck. "I mean, 'all right' might still be a bit of a stretch on a global scale, but for _this_? It happened, I dealt with it, it's behind me. Honest. And to whatever extent I'm… some manner of functional human being these days, they each get a major share in the credit."

Pepper had watched Tony pretend to be all right while in various states of crisis for years, and this was different. She could feel it — a kernel of calm that he seemed to be carrying now. She reached out for his hands and tried to absorb some of that strength for herself.

"They must have been good friends," she said.

"Yeah." Tony turned one of her hands over, and his thumb lightly traced her palm. "I was never _quite_ enough of a selfish bastard to wish that you were there with me. Knowing you were safe… it was one of the things that kept me going. But I couldn't have made it on my own. No chance. I hope you get to meet them."

"So do I," said Pepper. "But they didn't come back with you?"

"No, they're taking a different route," Tony said. "Along with the rest of the team. But that part comes at the end. I'm going to pick up after the bad day, all right? Because that was when things started getting better."

 


	2. The Next Day

Sneaking away from the landing site was pretty easy. So was finding Alisha and Aaron once they'd done the same thing. They met up with another one of Jean's friends, Kiran, once all the EMTs and other people had finally left. The other Peter had gone public or something and was sticking around in Canada, at least for the quarantine.

Peter absolutely could _not_ stick around in Canada for the quarantine. May was expecting him back Sunday night. She would hit the roof if he was even an hour late, never mind three days.

The four of them jumped into Kiran's car and headed south, and a couple hours later they were at the border. Alisha went really still and _stared_ at the guard for a couple seconds, and suddenly they were waved through. And that… was a crime, probably? But whatever, it worked.

By then it was getting really late, and they stopped at a motel not long after. Kiran got them two rooms next door to each other. Peter slung his backpack into the corner and flopped face down on the closest bed, and that was the last thing he remembered.

The next morning, he, Alisha and Kiran all crowded into the little bathroom. Peter had taken a bunch of pictures of himself before he'd left — that had been one of the other Peter's ideas — and the two of them cut his hair to match. It looked okay to him, at least. Hopefully May would think so, too.

It was a long and boring day, just sitting there in the back seat while the other three took turns driving. Peter didn't even have any of his schoolwork or whatever. All that stuff was at home.

States crawled by. He jerked awake the next time they pulled into a rest stop, and discovered that they'd crossed into New York.

"Pretty close now," Alisha said. "I'll pull up some maps, and you can let us know where you want to be dropped off."

"Thanks."

Just a couple hours later, they reached the city. Kiran crossed the East River and exited the highway, and pretty soon they were pulling off the road.

"Here's the phone Peter was using," Kiran said, and handed it over. "It's brand new, prepaid. You can use it as a burner, or get rid of it — up to you. Is there anything else you need for alibi purposes?"

"No, I think I'm good," Peter said. "Thanks a lot for the lift. I really appreciate it."

"Of course."

"Hey, Spider-Man?" Alisha said. "I know you've got Tony looking out for you, and that outmatches anything we could offer. But if you ever need help, or if you just want to talk to someone who knows the whole story, feel free to get in touch, okay? It's what we do."

Having people around who knew that he was Spider-Man had been okay. More than okay, really. He was going to miss that part — where he didn't have to remember to be two different people.

"Thanks," he said again. "Maybe we can have a portal reunion sometime, you know?"

She grinned. "See you around."

It took him two buses and a ten-minute walk to get back to his street. That part pretty much passed in a blur. The next thing he knew, he was turning the key to the front door of his building.

Home. He hadn't been there in almost a year. And nobody but him could know that.

Up the stairs, down the hall, unlock the door. His body remembered how it all worked like he'd been there only yesterday.

"Hey, May," he called, like he did every time. "You home?"

"Peter!" She appeared in the kitchen doorway, mopping off her hands with a dish towel. "You're early — I wasn't expecting you for another hour."

She looked exactly like he remembered. Which was stupid, because it'd only been a couple days for her.

Then he caught up with what she'd just said. "Yeah, they, uh…" Crap. _That_ was what he should have been doing all day — going over his story. "There were some people whose flights weren't leaving until later, and they were allowed to stay late," he invented. Yeah, sounded reasonable. "But since a lot of us just took the train, we left after the last session."

(The Stark Internship Orientation Weekend. That was what he'd called it. As far as May knew, Peter had spent the last forty-eight hours hanging out with a bunch of other high school students from across the country, doing science.)

"Well, I do have to thank you for keeping in touch with me," May said. "You know how nervous I was about this whole thing once we found out about that awful portal. I guess it's just as well you spent the weekend in Manhattan — do you know it opened not twenty minutes from here?"

Yes. He did know that. "Yeah," Peter said, while trying to inch his way toward his room without looking obvious about it. "I heard. That must have been scary. At least they were ready for it that time. Or that's what it looked like on the news."

But May wasn't letting him past. "You know, I just… I really don't know what the world is coming to these days. Alien invasions? Portals stealing people off the street?" She sighed. "But apparently it's over now. I suppose that's the main thing. So? How was your weekend?"

"Great!" Peter said. He hitched his backpack a little higher on his shoulders and shuffled a few more steps. "Um. Pretty intense, you know? Really busy. But I learned a lot, and I got to spend— I mean, we all got to spend some time with Mr. Stark, so."

"Tony Stark? He was taken on Thursday!"

_Crap_. "Yes. He was. After he got back, I mean."

May frowned. "Aren't they all still in Canada?"

"Video chat! He called us on video chat." Desperately, he said, "You know, May, it was a really long weekend and I'm pretty tired. I'd like to unpack and rest a little, okay?"

She blinked. "Okay. Sure. Dinner later?"

"Yeah, definitely."

He tried to grin in, like, a normal way and walk past her toward his room. But May frowned again and stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"Peter, are you all right?" Her eyes narrowed as she searched his face. "You seem… I'm not sure. Taller."

Oh crap, oh _crap_. "How could I get taller in one weekend?" he said, and his voice sounded weird even to him. "Come on, that's ridiculous."

Thankfully, she shrugged and let it go. "Of course it is. But you could really use a haircut."

Then Peter was _finally_  back in his room.

Everything looked the same. Except at the same time it looked different. It was still weird to see all this plastic and metal around, after he'd spent so long in a literal log cabin. His room had so much _stuff_. He remembered he used to think of it as small, but now it looked huge compared with the tiny little closets they'd all had up at the beta site.

He turned the lock on the door, because May _still_ sometimes burst in even though he'd asked her not to. Then he sank down onto his bed. (Softer than straw and _way_ softer than blankets on the ground.)

His phone was right where he'd left it, back in the corner on the floor beneath the bed. He turned it on and scrolled through all the texts he'd missed… and all his replies. There was no way May would have been okay with not hearing from him all weekend, so the other Peter had set up a clone of his phone so that he could send her updates while Peter was away. It was all reasonable stuff, _Having fun but really busy_ , that sort of thing. Nothing too specific that he might accidentally contradict later. That was good.

Next, he dug under the mattress and found the list he'd made. _Write down every single thing you're planning to do or in the middle of doing,_ the other Peter had told him. _Write down what you talked to people about recently. Even if it seems tiny and pointless. You won't remember any of it by the time you get back_. According to the list… wow, yeah, he'd forgotten all of this. He had a physics report due in a couple days, and a bunch of stuff to read for English. Not much else for homework, though — he'd caught up on as much as possible before he'd left.

More notes. The last things he'd talked to his friends about. Other stuff that was going on at school. Some Spider-Man ideas. It was coming back to him.

He was home. Life was back to normal.

Whatever 'normal' was supposed to mean.

But he still felt _weird_.

At the very bottom of his backpack was the dagger that Kel had given him for his birthday. (His sort-of birthday. He was back to being fifteen again, officially.) After double-checking that his door was locked, he fished it out.

The handle and the sheath were both decorated with this really delicate twisting gold pattern — and Peter was pretty sure it was real gold. He slowly drew the blade from its sheath. The balance was… well, it was hard to describe, exactly, but when he held the dagger in his hand, he felt like he could make it do anything he wanted. The blade was double-edged, with a groove down the middle, and incredibly sharp.

He'd have to find a good place to keep it. May would _not_ understand him suddenly having a thing like that.

Kel had given it to him — and she really hadn't had to do that, since her people didn't even do birthdays — and now he might never see her again. She'd gone home, too. To an alien planet on the other side of the galaxy.

Not that people needed to be on the other side of the galaxy to be out of reach. Captain America was under arrest or in custody or whatever. Peter had no idea if he was ever going to see him or the other Avengers again. Or Jean. Or even Mr. Stark. Yeah, he'd _said_ he would stay in touch, but that didn't always mean—

The buzz of his phone made him jump.

_Hey, kiddo. A mutual friend says you're home. That true?_

Peter grinned. Maybe things weren't so bad, after all. _Yeah, I just got in a few minutes ago._

_Your cover story holding up?_

_I think so._

_Good. I'm going to be busy putting out fires for a while, thanks to Steve's knack for doing everything in the most inconvenient manner possible. But I'll be back in touch as soon as things settle down._

A pause. Then:

_Promise._

 


	3. Ten Days After

Steve, to his ongoing surprise, was not in prison.

The instant the quarantine was lifted, Tony swooped in with, as he put it, hot and cold running lawyers. ("Steve, there are a thousand problems ahead of us that can't be fixed with money. _Please_ just let me fix the few that can, all right?") Steve was arrested and held for a few hours until a hearing could be arranged, the result of which was that he'd been fitted with an ankle monitor and released on bond. Formal extradition proceedings, he was told, could take months, especially given that more than one country wanted a piece of him. In the meantime, he was forbidden from leaving Moncton but free to move about the city.

Steve's release had been predicated on him having a place to stay. He would have paid for the hotel himself, but Tony swooped in on that one, too, and now Steve had a very nice room in an extended-stay inn downtown. All in all, it was a far better beginning than he'd anticipated.

His legal team had instructed him in the strongest possible terms that he should _not_ make a public statement, but Steve wasn't so great at following instructions. He was still working on writing it all down — everything that had happened during those ten months in Venen-ka, and also his hopefully more tempered reflections on the Leipzig-Siberia incident. (Most of it, anyway. The parts involving Tony's parents weren't his to tell.) It was… challenging to be measured when it came to the events involving Bucky: he'd been _right_  to intervene and nothing could convince him otherwise. But that was less important than the damage that had resulted.

When Steve wasn't making notes, he was keeping up with the news. The abductees had long since made it home, and quite a few were giving interviews.

Everyone wanted to know about the Avengers, and the war.

Of course, the civilians had for the most part been kept well away from the fighting. The majority of people could only give eyewitness accounts of a few events: the original camp takeover, Wanda and Alisha's manipulation of the supply delivery teams, and the attack by the eyestalk plants just after Steve, Sam and Tony had destroyed the research outpost. A few, though, like Gabriela and Frank, had been on the catapult line during the final battle at the suspension bridge, and they talked about what they'd seen: Mjentur, Geckos, cheetahs and millipede-tanks.

It mattered. The story mattered.

It mattered that no one was blaming Steve for endangering them, even though more than one interviewer tried to spin things that way. The Avengers had ruined Jean's original plan, yes, but they'd also made it possible to overthrow the labor camp ten months early. Those who spoke about their experiences — Gabriela, Frank, the Oregon Six, and several more besides — all described how much it had meant to take back their freedom.

They also acknowledged that the general population had lived in relative safety only because the camp defense team had been willing to endanger themselves time and time again. Most people hadn't seen much of the war, but everyone had caught glimpses of the injuries that had resulted. That part mattered, too.

In the eyes of the public, the Avengers were back on an upswing.

The news broadcast switched from highlights of Matt, Mark and Kerry's most recent interview to a different segment: _Who Is Jean_? Steve already knew that whatever panel had been assembled this time would spend fifteen minutes or more talking around the fact that no one knew the answer. He reached for the remote and switched off the TV.

There came a knock at the door. It could have only been Tony. Steve got up off the couch and crossed to open it… and stopped dead.

Not Tony. T'Challa.

He was immaculately dressed in a black suit, looking every inch the head of state that he was. The sight was a baffling incongruity against the backdrop of the hallway of Steve's hotel.

"Hello, Steven," he said.

The reply came out by reflex. "Your Majesty."

T'Challa was accompanied by two members of the Dora Milaje. They seemed even more stone-faced than Steve remembered. Clearly their king was making this trip against advice.

"May I come in?" T'Challa prompted.

"Sorry — yes, of course." Steve stepped back and gestured them all inside.

The two bodyguards swept the suite with brisk professionalism. Feeling more than a little self-conscious about the meagerness of his hospitality, Steve pulled out the desk chair and offered it to T'Challa before resuming his place on the couch.

"I suppose it goes without saying that I didn't expect to see you here," he said.

T'Challa inclined his head in acknowledgment. "As king, I seldom get to indulge in spontaneity. But I wished to speak with you. I suppose you're aware that intelligence agents from multiple countries have you under surveillance?"

They were almost cute, following him around at what they thought was a discreet distance when he went out for groceries. At least they made a change of pace from the reporters, who were the opposite of subtle. "Yes, I noticed that."

T'Challa pulled out his phone and tapped a button. "There. Some privacy."

"Thanks. How's…" But Bucky was in cryo, protected and unchanging. "Uh, how's Scott?"

The corner of T'Challa's mouth twitched ever so slightly. "I am told that he is well. I would ask after your team, but it seems you won't have news from them for some time."

Steve wasn't the only one who'd been writing things down. Within hours of his return, Vision had produced a scrupulously detailed mission report and submitted it simultaneously to every member nation in the UN. Obviously it had leaked onto the internet shortly thereafter. There was no need to ask whether T'Challa knew why the rest of the Avengers hadn't returned through the portal. The entire world had heard the story.

"Yes, it's too early for them to have returned to our universe yet," Steve said. "They're going to cross to a different planet and make their way back from there."

"Through a sort of fracture in the fundamental structure of spacetime that allows instantaneous transportation over galactic distances?"

When T'Challa said it, it almost made sense. Steve shrugged and replied, "So I'm told."

"Vision's report states only that the endpoint of the fracture is somewhere in Brazil," T'Challa said. "I don't suppose you have any detail to add."

"No. Jean was always very careful not to share that information. It's somewhere in the Amazon. That's all I know." In the face of T'Challa's cool scrutiny, Steve squirmed in place like a schoolboy in the principal's office. "I realize that we left Wakanda against your better judgment," he said. "Obviously I've made a decision about my own future, but for the rest of my team, once they return… I realize it's asking a lot, but—"

"Yes."

He blinked. "Yes?"

"Yes, they have safe harbor in Wakanda," T'Challa said, and this time he smiled openly. "You did _well_ , Steven. You brought everyone home alive."

But the praise only brought on a renewed sense of shame. Steve's face went hot and he looked away. "I'm the one who endangered them in the first place."

"Really?" T'Challa said with mock surprise. " _You_ created the portals, then?"

"You know what I mean," he said. "You read the report. When I went through, I had no idea what I was getting into. I was captured practically the moment I reached the camp. The team had to rescue me, and the cost was going to war." He glanced at the tablet where his notes were stored. "We did save everyone. There were plenty of moments when it could have gone the other way."

"So you were wrong to go?"

Steve still didn't know. Even after all the time he'd spent reviewing the facts. "I did what I thought I had to do," he said. "Just like Jean did. If she and Kel had felt safe enough to go through official channels with their information, a lot of things would have been different. Maybe I made the only decision possible under the circumstances, but I also contributed to those circumstances — the government's distrust of the Avengers, and the things they felt they had to do in response. Now I'm just… looking for a way forward where I'm part of the solution."

He winced at how cliché he'd just sounded, even to his own ears. But T'Challa gave him a nod of approval.

"A good beginning," he said. "I believe that you will find it."

The vote of confidence was more meaningful than Steve had expected. "I appreciate that," he said. "Truly, I do. But somehow I don't think that's all you came here to tell me."

T'Challa steepled his fingers. "There are two things you need to know," he said. "You'll recall that we offered to send scientific advisors to your country to assist with the portal crisis. That offer was refused. It was only after the final portal closed that I learned why. The objective of your country's task force was not the safe return of the abductees. It was to block the portal's last appearance. Although they failed in this, they were very nearly successful in sabotaging its targeting systems. If the portal had opened under those conditions, your return would have almost certainly been fatal."

Steve's jaw went slack. " _What_? Who would give an order like that?"

"Do you need to ask?"

No. He supposed he didn't. "Ross."

"He fears any form of power that isn't under his direct control," T'Challa said. "That makes him a very dangerous man. Far more so than I had realized. It was only by the last-minute intervention of the Canadian government — negotiated, I believe, by Ms. Potts of Stark Industries — that his plan was thwarted. Your President recalled him and relinquished jurisdiction, and in return, these events were kept confidential. Of course," T'Challa added with a faint smile, "I wasn't party to any such agreement."

At least this began to explain why Steve had heard nothing from Ross, either privately or in the news. He'd overstepped and gotten slapped down. It was a lucky break for Steve and his team: the voice that would have been calling for their heads the loudest had been temporarily silenced.

Tony needed to know about this, if he didn't already.

"I understand," Steve said to T'Challa. "Thank you for the warning. What's the second thing?"

T'Challa paused, and something about his expression set Steve's heart to racing before he'd even heard the words.

"Barnes is awake."

 


	4. Two Weeks After

" _Fifteen years old_! He's a _child_ , do you understand that? And you sent him to an alien planet with absolutely _no_ concept of what could happen or how dangerous it was going to be. What the _hell_ were you thinking? How could you be so irresponsible?"

Peter lowered his eyes with all apparent contrition. "I'm really sorry."

But Tony wasn't nearly finished. "We went to _war_ over there! A _very real war_ with battlefields, tanks, lizards with axes, armies of Minotaurs and a goddamned dragon! Do you know how many times he nearly died? How do you think Jean would have felt if the kid had gotten killed on her watch? You had _no right_ to put any of us in that position!"

"I had no idea," Peter responded. His signs were subdued and held close to his body. "None at all. I swear. If I'd known he was just a kid, I never would have done it. I'm truly very sorry." He paused. "And also, thank you."

Tony pulled up short with a suspicious frown. "For what?"

Peter reached out and entwined his fingers in Aaron's. With his free hand, he continued, "For helping to bring everyone home safe."

Oh, _goddammit_. Tony spun on his heel and paced away as far as the modest living room allowed. He reached the far wall and turned back, and narrowed his eyes critically.

"You know, Jean does the earnest face a lot better than you," he said.

Peter gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Yeah. She's had like twice as long to practice."

"How old are you, anyway?"

"Twenty-three."

" _Jesus Christ_."

Tony sighed and rolled his neck as some of his anger abated. Peter looked acceptably chastened. Maybe this wasn't the most emotionally mature response, but he did feel somewhat better for having scared the shit out of the guy who'd done the same to him.

"If it helps," Peter offered tentatively, "when Jean gets back, she's gonna ream me out even worse. She's _scary_ when she's angry."

Maybe his efforts hadn't been appreciated after all. "Excuse me?" Tony said. " _I'm_ scary when I'm angry."

"When you're angry, you get loud. When she's angry, she gets _quiet_. That's _way_ worse." But then Peter seemed to realize his mistake, because he hastily added, "Not that you weren't scary, too! You were! And now I have a whole extra month to anticipate something even _more_ scary — it's like psychological torture, really, because as bad as _this_ was—"

"All right, all right. Knock it off before you sprain something." Tony pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to convince himself that he wasn't even a tiny bit amused. "Anyway. What do you think of the house?"

"It's _amazing_ ," Peter chirped, because apparently they didn't make psychological torture like they used to. "I'm still trying to get my head around the thing where you think to yourself one day, 'Hey, you know what would be convenient? Buying another house,' and then you just, like, _do_ it."

"Yeah. Well." Another problem that could be solved with money, that paled in comparison with the ones that couldn't. "The finances are buried in layers of shell companies," he said. "No link to me. Use it as long as you need."

Jean's crew liked their privacy, and Tony was trying to respect that. Now that he knew that Peter and Aaron were based in Sacramento, it would have been the work of thirty seconds to track down their address. But he wasn't doing it, just like he wasn't pulling Alisha's info out of the HR database at Stark Industries — first because he wasn't that kind of asshole, and second because information that he didn't have couldn't be taken from him.

So: due to the anonymity issue, Rhodey couldn't go to Aaron. And since Aaron was still in school, it was equally impossible to bring him to Rhodey. This house — an unassuming little bungalow in the Sacramento suburbs — was the compromise. Tony'd bought it and had it furnished, and moved in all the PT equipment that Rhodey could be reasonably expected (or unreasonably hoped) to need. He could live there in privacy, and Aaron could come and go as needed.

Speaking of Rhodes, he'd been taking a tour of the premises. Tony heard the faint whir of his wheelchair moments before he reappeared from down the hallway.

"So what do _you_ think of the place?" Tony asked.

"It's fine," Rhodey said.

It wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement, and Peter picked up on the rising tension. "We're going to look at the closets now!" he announced. "You two go ahead and chat." He led Aaron away by the hand.

The living room furniture was still dusty from the moving truck. Tony took a seat on the couch, a little gingerly, and Rhodey swung around to face him.

"While you're here," Tony said, "you might think about learning some sign. It helps things along."

"Yeah. I guess I'll have some time to kill."

"And remember, if you need anything, I can be here in a couple hours. Just gimme a call. Anytime. And I'll drop by now and then, see how you're doing."

"Right."

Okay. Maybe Tony had gotten a little carried away with his own enthusiasm, when he should have been paying more attention to the fact that it wasn't being reciprocated.

New tactic. "I know you're not a hundred percent sold yet," he said. "But it's _me_ saying this, okay? The things I have seen that young man do are… miraculous. Will you give him a shot?"

"Bit late to back out now," Rhodey said, still with no discernible expression. "You already bought the house."

As if Tony gave a damn about the house. "Hey," he said softly, "I know we're a bit out of your zone here. I've been pushing this. Maybe too hard. If you're not, you know, then we can always just…" He waved his hands in an attempt to convey an overall extrication from things.

Rhodey's eyes narrowed, and his finger came up to stroke his lip. "Pepper was right," he said after a pause.

"Usually," Tony said. "About what?"

"You have changed."

Oh brother. "Aren't you one of the people who was always telling me I needed to deal with my shit?"

"Yeah, I just never expected you to listen."

"Well. It took a portal, an alien planet, a labor camp and a war." Tony gave a quiet chuckle. "Actually, it took coming completely unglued in a situation where glue was non-optional. I'll tell you about it sometime. But yeah, if you insist on pointing it out, I'm trying some… stuff. And anyway, we were talking about you."

Rhodey's expression sobered, and he looked down. Tony sensed that he was about to get his first straight answer of the day.

"I do want my legs back," he said. "I'm not gonna lie about that. Even if it's just enough to make walking in the braces a little easier. But this idea of…" He waved a hand. "You shouldn't be able to change a person's body just by _thinking_ about it. It's… I don't know. This one might be a little too weird for me."

"It is weird," Tony said. "You're not wrong. There were two empathic healers in camp — Kel and Aaron. Mostly I went to Kel to get patched up, but I also saw Aaron a couple times."

Rhodey looked at him askance. "Just how much patching up did you need over there, anyway?"

"It was a four-month land war, things happened." Tony flicked his fingers dismissively. " _Anyway_ , to take a specific example, Aaron did my scar." He tapped his cheek. "I don't know if you heard about this. The folks who were running things over there branded their captives. Fun times."

"Yeah, it came up," said Rhodey. He studied Tony's face with a frown. "But I don't see a mark now."

"Once we took the place over, Aaron got rid of them all." Tony knew his grin was unconvincing, but that was okay. He wasn't trying to make light. "He numbed up my face, sliced off the scar tissue, and rehealed it properly. By thinking about it, yeah, plus some judicious laying of hands. Took five minutes, didn't feel a thing. And that's nothing next to some of the other injuries he handled." He shrugged. "I know it rings a bit hollow, trying to guess what I'd do in your place. But after seeing the things I've seen? I think I'd give it a try."

"I, uh…" Uncharacteristically, Rhodey turned his face away. "You know, Tony, maybe I haven't mentioned this recently — actually, given how long you were away, I _know_ I haven't mentioned this recently — but the things you've done for me are—"

But Tony immediately cut him off. "Look, hey, you don't have to— yes, I'm a spectacular friend and you're lucky to have me. It's fine. No need to make a fuss."

He chuckled this time, which was a hell of a lot better. "Well, I'm glad you haven't changed _too_ much."

"Right. So?"

Rhodey angled his head toward the hallway, where Aaron had gone. "You really trust this guy?"

"Yes, I do."

"Then I guess I'll give him a shot."

 


	5. Three Weeks After (Earth Time)

Sam had no idea what to expect from his second alien planet. After all, his first alien planet had been a serious letdown in terms of culture, technology, and not being full of giant bugs that wanted to eat him.

At least the damned paralysis had finally worn off. He'd spent the bulk of the hike through Venen-ka on horseback, slowly building up from just a couple shaky steps per day to longer and longer stints of walking. By the time the group reached their destination, twenty-four days later, Sam could just about manage the day's hike on foot, but he knew it would be weeks yet before he'd rebuilt his lost stamina and muscle mass.

The hike itself had been long and tiring but not terribly hazardous, thanks to the combined defensive efforts of Kel, Wanda, and Ursula the cheetah. (Sam sometimes thought about the original version of this part of the plan, where Jean and Kel would have been on their own, and wondered what the hell they'd been thinking.) On the twenty-fourth morning, they reached their destination: a chunk of forest that didn't look appreciably different from any other chunk of forest, except for a cube-shaped wooden building plunked down between the trees.

The Nyth just loved their rectangles. Maybe the next guys would be more creative.

Kel had warned them about this: there were two Nyth stationed here to monitor the bridge. Sam wasn't combat-ready yet, so he hung back with the livestock while the rest of the team stormed the outpost. The numbers being what they were, it was over fast.

"It's back there." Kel pointed with her sword, which now needed a good wipedown. "Not sure how far. It moves over time. Hard to see. Walk very carefully. I want to search the building first, then I'll follow."

Wanda took the lead, and the team walked — very carefully — around the little building. Behind it, unsurprisingly, was more forest. Sam's eyes narrowed as he scrutinized the area for whatever an interdimensional bridge was supposed to look like.

"There," Wanda said, and pointed.

He followed her finger, and… oh. _There_.

It was just a patch of distortion in the air, like a faint shimmer or haze, easily overlooked. Sam took a few steps to the side, keeping a wary distance, and abruptly even that tiny trace vanished from view.

"Not much to look at, is it," he said, and inched his way back until he could see the haze again.

"No way to tell if there's a planet on the other side, or empty space," Natasha replied.

Sam glared. "You have all the fun ideas."

Jean asked, "Wanda? Do you perceive anything from it?"

Wanda took a few more steps forward, tilting her head as if straining to hear a whisper. "It's very gentle," she said. "If the portal was like a gunshot, then this is barely a touch. Two different realities, just grazing each other. It's _home_ on the other side, but more than that I don't know."

"Easy way to check," Kel said, popping up out of nowhere as usual. She held a baseball-sized wooden sphere in her hand. "Send a message. I announce my name, how many I bring with me. I surprised the Nyth when I arrived, but for my people, it's safer to be polite."

"How long are we going to be stuck waiting for a reply?" Clint asked.

"Not long. The universes move away from each other now, and when they do this, the difference in times becomes less. We still move faster, I think, but only a small amount."

She tossed the sphere through the air. The instant it touched the haze, it was stolen from reality in a flash of white light.

Sure. No problem. That looked _perfectly_ safe.

With nothing else to do, the group fell back to the side of the Nyth building to wait. George was already chomping away at the foliage. Ursula made a casual leap to the roof and settled down with her head on her paws.

Kel must have been right about both the time change and the destination, because barely half an hour went by before the light flashed again and deposited a new wooden baseball at their feet. She scooped it up and twisted the two halves apart, and examined the paper inside.

"Permitted," she said, and grinned at Sam. "I promise this came from a planet and not vacuum. Ready?"

Kel led the way, and the rest followed one by one, vanishing in a flash until only Sam was left. The sole human being on the planet.

He looked at George. "You ready for this?"

George's absurd lizard tongue flicked out and swiped him across the nose.

"Yeah. Somehow I figured you'd say that."

He took hold of George's bridle and walked with him into the haze.

First, the bright white light. Then an instant of bitter, shocking cold — gone almost before it could register — and a _jolt_ like the whole universe had missed a step. Then Sam landed on his second alien planet.

_Ground. Gravity. Air. So far, so good._

It was a lot warmer here — high seventies, he guessed — and the air smelled fresh and didn't seem to be killing him. Slowly, Sam straightened up and looked around.

He was still outdoors, though no longer in a forest. The trees had been replaced by a neatly maintained lawn that was surrounded at a generous distance by white fencing. To his left, beyond the fence, was some kind of road, though he didn't see or hear any vehicles. To his right, considerably closer, was a two-story building made from what looked like brick — a welcome change from the ubiquitous log cabins on Venen-ka.

And dead ahead of him, even closer than that, were two Brenithi.

They were… there was no other way to put it. They were devils.

No, seriously. Each one had blood-red skin and a crown of five short black horns. They were _tall_ devils, too: Jean was the tallest human present, and both Brenithi towered over her by fully a foot.

Sam generally didn't notice Kel's facial scars anymore, but he found himself taking another look at them now. They started at her hairline exactly where her horns would have been, if the genetic dice had landed that way.

In other respects, though, the Brenithi looked surprisingly human. The faces had the correct configuration: two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth. Their hair, short and black, began just behind their horns. They wore clothing in drab shades of blue and grey, decorated at the edges with gold threads.

Kel was talking with one of the guards, while the other one watched the newcomers with an air of distinct disapproval. Sam stood by and tried to look neither antagonistic nor intimidated. Luckily, it didn't take long before an understanding was reached. Kel's buddy made a curt gesture in the direction of the road, and Kel gave an equally curt nod of acknowledgment.

"A short walk to the town," she said to the humans. "Follow me."

Alien planet number two was proving to be a lot more neatly maintained than alien planet number one. The road, wide and straight, had the texture of asphalt, though it was a much lighter shade of grey. There was no litter or graffiti to be found. On either side were more fenced-off grass fields, all neatly mowed, some with structures visible in the distance.

_Every adult was a soldier, right? Could be they appreciate some order in their lives._

This part of the continent was quite flat: grassland stretched on as far as Sam could see. By the position of the sun, it was late morning or early afternoon. Far off in the distance, he spotted a flock of birds flying in classic vee formation, and the sight was so Earth-like that for a second Sam couldn't even stand it. _God_ , he wanted to see home again.

Up ahead of them, as promised, was the town. They liked to build with brick in these parts, it seemed, and most of the structures had some kind of trimming or other decoration to them — a pleasant change from the stark functionality the Nyth had preferred. Sam could see a couple of Brenithi out and about, but mostly the place was quiet.

The road led through the center of town, but Kel turned left and took them around the perimeter instead. Their destination turned out to be a sprawling complex set a couple hundred yards away from the town border. It consisted of about three dozen little buildings, each one no larger than either a good-sized room or a very small apartment, scattered in an irregular pattern across the grass.

It took a second, but then Sam got the idea. This was some kind of hotel or hostel. The room-sized buildings were exactly that: individual rooms. Each one had frosted windows for privacy, and what looked like a palm scanner by the door.

Kel headed first for the back of the complex, where a much larger building proved to be the barn. It was unoccupied, but the fact of its presence made Sam wonder if pack animals were in common in this culture.

He got George unbuckled from all his gear and led him into one of the stalls. There was a trough along the side, and clean bedding on the ground. George sniffed at a large knob on the wall above the trough, and in response it released a stream of water. He plunged his head into it and slurped happily.

"The spaces clean themselves," Kel said. "I'll come back after to make sure the food is correct."

First, though, she took the humans to claim their rooms.

A palm scanner glowing faintly orange indicated an availability. At Kel's instruction, Sam pressed his hand to the pad until the light switched to green and the door unlocked.

The room was single-occupancy, and Spartan. The bed was nothing but a plain rectangular shelf, practically indistinguishable from the desk except for its size. An interior door led to what Sam would have expected to be the bathroom, except it was nothing but a bare cubicle.

Pretty bleak… until Kel started showing them how it all worked. She stood next to the bed and swept her hand above the surface like she was dramatically throwing back an imaginary quilt. In response, the surface of the bed somehow surged up, folded over, and transformed itself into a mattress, blanket and pillow.

"Are we allowed to take souvenirs?" Clint asked. "Because I want one of those."

"How does it work?" Natasha asked.

Kel grimaced. "I don't have the words in Human. They are very tiny pieces, stored in the walls and the surfaces, and they can change themselves into a small number of different forms."

"Some kind of nanotechnology," said Natasha. "Efficient and reliable enough to be in common use. Nice."

Kel swept her hand back the other way, and the bed melted until only the shelf remained. "Cleaned each time it makes itself, yes?" She summoned the bed again, this time with a slower gesture, and the mattress and blankets that appeared were noticeably softer and fluffier. "It will try to learn what you like. Not always very good at this, though. You can try different things."

The bathroom functioned on similar principles. On one wall was a pattern of concentric circles. Kel pressed her fingers to the center and drew them out, and the material of the wall extended and transformed into a faucet and sink. Drawing a finger along the faucet started the water, and tracing the circles right or left set the temperature. Same deal for the toilet and the shower. Towels could be summoned from a rectangle on the wall, then tossed into the corner afterward, where the material of the room swallowed them up again.

There was even a built-in food service, which took Sam by surprise. Adult j'Brenithi didn't eat solid food, and Kel had reminded them frequently in the preceding weeks not to snack in public. Children, however, did need sustenance, and a few selections could be produced from an indentation above the desk. Two of the choices were very obviously baby food, and Sam wasn't _that_ hungry. But there were also these rice cake sort of things that were filling enough, if on the tasteless side. For the adults, there were a couple of flavored drinks. Plates and glasses, too, were produced and reabsorbed on demand.

(The adult flavors, incidentally, were 'overcooked beef' and 'every imaginable salad dressing mixed together', for some damned reason.)

Menu aside, it was a fine setup, especially compared to where they'd come from.

Once the five humans had all checked in, Kel explained the next steps. The guards at the bridge had sent a message up the chain of command, announcing her presence, and now the group had to wait for the big boss to arrive.

"The _hireth_ here is Ral verak Shi, hireth j'Brenithi," Kel said. "We need their permission to travel through their territory. They come here to hear our request, but probably won't do it quickly. A few days."

Jean asked, "Is there anything we should do to prepare?"

"No." Kel's smile was apologetic. "My job, not yours. The only thing you can do is wait here. You can go outside, walk the animals between the buildings if you want, but don't go into the city. There you would be unclaimed, and this can go badly. I'll check on you at least once each day, more if I can. Is it clear?"

Clear enough.

"You know the one thing I didn't bring, that I _really_ wish I'd brought?" Clint said once Kel had left. "A deck of cards."

They stayed in the hostel for three days. Kel stopped by each day, morning and evening, but otherwise was not on the premises. Sam devoted some of the time to his self-directed PT regimen, and quite a bit more to washing his clothes and himself in _hot running water_. Beyond that, there was livestock duty, socializing with the team, and playing around with the features of the room.

Natasha somehow got her bed programmed to give her eight pillows with big lacy ruffles on them every time she turned it on. She refused to explain how she'd done it, and she also refused to admit that she couldn't figure out how to reset it to normal.

When Kel arrived on the fourth morning, she'd upgraded her wardrobe. Her clothes were black, neat and new, and shot through with abstract gold designs. She had a sword on her hip, another on her back, and multiple knives on her belt. She also wore… Sam was pretty sure it was called a torque: a necklace that was a solid ring of gold. The pendant that hung from it was also gold, and bore a complicated design of criss-crossing lines. On her left wrist was a thick gold bracelet with a line of small green gems around the center.

Sam, in his labor camp uniform, felt seriously underdressed.

Kel confirmed that the day of the big meeting had arrived. First, though, they had to talk through a few points of etiquette: inoffensive ways to hold their hands, when to talk (never), and how and when to genuflect. Sam had _opinions_  on that last one, but he stuffed them back down. It was one damned meeting and it was all that stood between them and heading home.

Then Kel spent a long time packing and repacking the bribes that they'd brought — vibranium bars, packets of rust, and a couple more packages and canisters that Sam couldn't identify. She left a few carefully selected items behind, and distributed the rest among the humans' five packs.

Finally, it was time to go.

There was something universal about a government building. Their destination was drab and grey, with a line of writing above the door. Sam wasn't surprised at all to walk into a dingy room with uncomfortable benches and several counters, only one of which had an employee at it. He also wasn't surprised that even though they were clearly the only people there, they had to wait. Kel checked in at the desk while the rest of them sat down.

It was quiet time now. As Kel had explained it, the more in control of the humans she appeared to be, the less likely it was that their presence would cause a problem. That worked out to a whole lot of submissive body language and not drawing attention to themselves. Children should be seen and not heard.

The wait probably felt longer than it was. Still, Sam's back was starting to ache by the time the administrator summoned them through the large double doors at the end of the waiting room.

They stepped into… Sam wasn't sure if he should call it a courtroom or an audience chamber or what. The room was round with a high, domed ceiling. On either side of the entrance were rows of gallery seating, currently empty. Directly ahead of them was an elevated platform with a judge's bench. All of the furniture was done in a deep red wood, something like mahogany. The floor was a lightly mottled grey, threaded through with gold, and so were the pillars that decorated the perimeter.

In short, no one standing in that room was about to forget that they were seeking audience with very important people.

Kel moved to the center of the room, and the rest of the group spread out behind her. Once they were in place, the door at the end of the platform opened, and the boss emerged.

Ral was square-jawed, broad-shouldered and flat-chested, and Sam had to fight the reflex to judge them by human standards and read them as male. (For that matter, he had no idea how any of that stuff worked around here.) Ral was also a shocking eight feet tall, and visibly older than any of the other Brenithi he'd seen yet.

The moment Ral appeared, Kel cried, " _Ni'nissich katal_!"

That was the cue. They'd rehearsed this. Six right knees dropped to the ground, and five right hands slapped smartly into left palms. They raised their hands before their faces, and waited.

" _Ti'gith_ ," Ral responded. That was the all-clear.

The party stood up again. Kel gave her name, and the hearing began.

And yes, alien culture, first contact, critical negotiation… but listening to two people talk in a language that Sam didn't understand was _boring_ , especially since Kel and Ral were both doing their best Vulcan impressions. (Was that mixing metaphors?) Sam stood there quietly with his hands pressed together like a choirboy, the better to keep his palms concealed, and tried not to fidget.

The conversation dragged on. Both Brenithi spoke with very little emotion, which gave Sam no way to gauge how the talks were going. He glanced at Jean, who was the only one of them with a working knowledge of the language. She looked focused, but not alarmed.

Then, abruptly, it was over. Ral stood and accorded Kel a miniscule nod, and departed the way they'd come. Kel had the rest of them empty their packs onto the chamber floor, then led them back to the waiting room.

"It's fine now," Kel said. "You can talk again. Thank you for your patience. These things are…" She gestured back at the audience chamber and gave a rueful shrug. "There are times when it's important to show the correct amount of respect. But we're allowed to travel to Tor's territory now. It will take time. No direct path from here. We have to take trains from city to city, yes? Until we get close to the border."

"Your folks don't have planes?" Clint asked.

"A plane is in the air?" she said. "We have these, but only for small numbers. Not for all of us, and definitely not for the animals."

Trains were still a serious upgrade over hiking. Sam wasn't going to complain.

"Is there any more bureaucracy you need to deal with?" he asked. When Kel's brow furrowed, he clarified, "Visas, reservations, tickets?"

"I need to check the maps, but I can do this from the rooms," she said. "Oh — and I need to give you these."

From an interior jacket pocket, she pulled a gold disk that was suspended between two lengths of flexible gold cord. The disk was smaller than the pendant she wore, but it bore the same design. Some kind of family crest, Sam figured. She draped it over his wrist and touched the ends of the cords together. They melded instantly, and the bracelet resized itself to something secure but not snug.

Yeah, all right. That was pretty cool.

"Awesome," Clint said once Kel was done decorating the rest of the party. "So what's next?"

"Back to the rooms, I think," Kel said. "I find the train maps, then we need to decide if we leave this afternoon or tomorrow."

Jean asked, "Will there be any time to look around the city before we go?"

Clint looked at her sideways. "You want to play tourist?"

"Don't you?" she countered. "We're on an alien planet! How many times in our lives will we get an opportunity like this?"

"Two," Clint said. "I've had two. Nat?"

"Yeah, two for me."

Jean sighed heavily. "Yes, very _well_. But given that my first alien planet was, to put it mildly, inhospitable, I don't think it's so terribly unreasonable to seek out some modest enjoyment on my second."

Kel looked pretty amused at the entire discussion, and Sam wondered what the cultural equivalent was — like if they'd been traveling on Earth and she wanted to hold up their itinerary in order to check out the nightlife in Scranton.

"We can walk some places tonight," she said. "Fine with me to leave tomorrow. Possibly there will be a performance because Ral is here. Might be interesting."

 

* * *

 

They did stick around for the afternoon, and go back to town in the evening. Jean's enthusiasm was a departure from her normal reserve, and Sam let it win him over. He would never be back this way again — why not see the sights?

One thing he could say about j'Brenithi: they liked their space. The streets were wide, the buildings spread out. There was nothing like a thronging marketplace or a crowded downtown thoroughfare, or a highrise district. It was hard to say for certain — for all Sam knew, the buildings were packed to the rafters — but it seemed like the population density was quite low.

In other respects, though, the place wasn't too different from neighborhoods Sam had seen on Earth. Wealthy neighborhoods, specifically. The grounds and the buildings were all in good condition. There was still no litter, no graffiti, not even a badly mowed lawn. Also no panhandlers, no one obviously homeless. Maybe they took care of their own in these parts.

Best guess, this was a commercial rather than residential district. No two buildings were shaped exactly alike, and they were decorated with designs and logos that probably made perfect sense to someone who spoke the language and knew the culture.

"No restaurants, though," he said.

"These guys eat their prey live, remember?" said Clint. "Their restaurants are the same as their slaughterhouses."

There were more Brenithi in the streets than there had been that morning. They tended to eyeball the group of humans disapprovingly until their gaze landed on Kel's pendant, after which they minded their own business. By their height, they were all adults. Sam hadn't seen any kids yet.

As the sun went down, spherical orange lights popped up out of the road and hovered in midair, suspended by Sam had no idea what. Lights of different colors also appeared on the buildings, some above the doors and others in the windows.

He angled his gaze higher, and found a different night sky than the one he'd gotten used to. The most striking feature was a dense, bright streak of stars, arcing overhead from one side of the horizon to the other like this planet had a close-up view of its own personal arm of the Milky Way. (Sam didn't know if that was astronomically realistic, but he liked the imagery.)

Wanda tapped his shoulder and pointed in the other direction, and — oh. Another critical difference. Venen-ka had no moons, Earth of course had the one, and this place had _four_. They were farther away than the Moon, or maybe smaller, and clustered together like they were engaged in a close mutual orbit of their own.

Sam grinned like a little kid, and Wanda grinned right back.

At first there had been no particular pattern to the flow of the pedestrians, but now everyone seemed to be headed in the same direction. Kel joined the crowd, leading the humans deeper into the center of town. Soon Sam could hear a noise from up ahead — a low pulse that resolved into a drumbeat.

They came to a space that Sam would have described as the town square if it hadn't been circular. To his left was a raised stage, also circular, with a high black curtain as a backdrop. To his right was a crescent-shaped set of bleachers, tall but thin, for the VIPs. Ral had a position of honor in a private box in the top row. The other seats were occupied by Brenithi who looked older and taller than average.

The rest of the crowd had to stand between the stage and the bleachers. The Brenithi were giving each other a whole lot of elbow room, which made it easy for Kel to lead her group to a spot close to the front.

The volume of the drumbeat faded, and in response the crowd stilled.

A line of Brenithi, dressed all in black, marched solemnly out from behind the curtain to ring the base of the stage. They came to rest facing the audience, and in perfect sync, they began to chant. It was a sound that Sam could only describe as Gregorian: slow, deep, harmonious.

Then came the actors. There were three of them to begin with, in black clothes adorned with gold jewelry. One had their horns covered in gold leaf. This one came to center stage and made a deep bow to Ral, who nodded back.

Suddenly the stage was flooded with more characters, these ones wearing silver masks with twisted, demonic features. With swords and knives they drove the three original players out to the very edges of the stage and left them cowering on their knees. ( _Bad guys. Check_.)

The wave of villains retreated again, and now the main characters took up their own chants. They seemed to weave under and over the chorus, drawing all of the voices together in a tale of desperation and anger.

Next were a series of scenes in which the main characters summoned a small crew of stalwart companions, each with their own unique weapons and jewelry. Together they journeyed a great distance, until they finally faced down the far more numerous demon army.

The huge fight scene at the end — and it was just a guess, but Sam wouldn't have been surprised if a lot of Brenith media had a huge fight scene at the end — was more than epic enough to impress. The clashing of the weapons, metal on metal, was a sharp counterpoint to the chorus of voices. Sam could feel the visceral thrill of danger, an echo of real battlefields.

By the end of the battle, clothes were torn and there was real blood on the stage. The last of the enemy fell, and as the body hit the ground, the chorus ceased. The silence was as profound as if the whole world had been wrapped in velvet.

A long pause, with no sound but his breathing.

Then the defeated actors jumped to their feet, and the entire company bowed to Ral. Ral stood in acknowledgement, and there was some back and forth that of course Sam couldn't follow. Once it was over, the actors vanished behind the curtain.

Applause didn't seem to be a thing here. The crowd was already breaking up.

Kel explained, "They spoke of the time that Ral led the forces who defeated the Seven Armies of the Kenetriach and delivered the Mavien Cluster to Brenith control."

Sam nodded as his guess was confirmed. One of the few things he knew about this culture was that status was acquired by people telling your story. A performance in honor of the VIP could only be about the VIP.

"Their combat skills are quite good," Natasha said.

"Of course."

"Was it rehearsed?" At Kel's frown, she clarified, "Were the moves planned in advance?"

"No, of course not," said Kel. "It feels wrong this way. They know who has to win, of course, but the best performers make it feel as close to real as possible. They train almost as much as those in active combat."

Sam hadn't thought about it that way, though it was obvious in hindsight. j'Brenithi were empaths — a tough crowd for a live performance. You want to portray a fight? You'd better _fight_.

No question it had been worth seeing, though. Sam nudged Jean and said, "There's something to be said for the tourist thing."

She smiled.

The dispersing crowd was giving the humans a wide berth… with one developing exception.

Sam had been wondering where the young folks were in this town, and now he'd found a few. The shortest was only a couple inches taller than Jean, and the tallest still wasn't a lock for the varsity basketball team. Their faces were younger, too, and their skin was a little brighter red than the adults. There were three of them, and they were inbound.

" _Enethe_ ," Kel muttered.

She stepped forward to intercept them. A sharp hand gesture warned the humans to stay back.

The ringleader got right up in Kel's face, much closer than polite society dictated, and spoke a sentence. It didn't sound like a nice sentence.

" _Sh'tek_ ," she said, glacially calm, and gave a short, even response.

Smart Mouth's gaze moved past her. He eyeballed the humans like Sam might have eyeballed a choice of prime ribs.

His second sentence sounded even nastier than his first.

Back on Venen-ka, Kel had mentioned more than once that certain social blunders on her world would result in a retaliatory stabbing. Sam had always wondered if she was being hyperbolic.

Now he got his answer.

It happened so fast, it seemed like Smart Mouth was already yelling in pain before Kel had even moved. He dropped to one knee and clutched at his thigh, which was gushing bright red blood. The knife in Kel's hand, which absolutely had not been there a second before, folded up and retracted somehow into her bracelet.

The other two kids looked about as shocked as Sam felt. They weren't making a move — at least, not in the next couple seconds. He was a hell of a lot more concerned about how the adults were going to respond. The few still hanging about the area were on alert, no question, but they also weren't jumping in.

Every drop of blood that poured onto the nice clean street vanished as soon as it landed. The surface sanitized itself just like the hostel bathroom.

For that matter, the stabbed boy seemed to be putting himself back together almost as quickly. After a moment to catch his breath, he got to his feet again, and this time he backed up to a respectful distance.

Buddy Number One was starting to look like he wanted to take a swing. Buddy Number Two, however, had more sense. He offered a quick, conciliatory sentence, then he and Smart Mouth herded their pal away.

Sam took what felt like his first breath in five minutes.

The kids vanished down a side street. The rest of the adults continued to disperse. Only Kel remained frozen in place.

Clint asked, "So are you allowed to just… do that?"

"It was an insult," Kel said. "Many heard. Yes."

"Can I have one of those knife-bracelets?"

"No."

"Can Nat?"

"No."

"Is it gonna take you a while to shift back into human mode?"

"Yes."

"Guess that's fair." Clint turned to Jean.

"I won't pretend to grasp every nuance of the language," Jean said, "but from what I could follow, the _eneth_ asked for… no, he asked if Kel _had_ a name. Only _shoratha_ can wear their clan crest the way she's doing; to overlook that is unspeakably rude. Then he suggested that we were snacks that she should share. Again, deliberately overlooking our markers of clan affiliation." She gestured to her wrist. "I suspect that Kel would have been within her rights to kill him, though given our position alone in another clan's territory, it was safer not to."

"Maybe we shouldn't wander around too much longer," Wanda said.

Sam couldn't argue with that.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Kel showed everyone how to swipe the palm pad by their door in order to check out. The rooms would clean themselves.

One obvious step seemed to be missing: no one was paying the bill. Sam asked Kel about it, and got a puzzled frown in response.

"A room isn't an extra thing that I need to buy myself," she said. "Not like…" She touched the fancy clan crest she still wore around her neck. "I have a name, and I am permitted to be here, so I can use a room. Same for any travelers. This is their purpose."

"Interesting idea, isn't it," Jean said. "Any citizen is always entitled to shelter, food and water, wherever they go."

"Very enlightened," Natasha replied. "Too bad about all the non-citizens who were invaded and conquered."

"I wasn't suggesting that _all_ of their principles were laudable."

Anyway. The relevant news was that they were leaving. The team collected their livestock — Sam was still waiting to see how Kel planned to put a really big lizard and an even bigger cheetah on a passenger train — and headed north along the road that ran the perimeter of the town.

It wasn't too long before they came in sight of the train tracks, which cut across the grasslands on a southeast line. Up ahead was a long, low building that had to be the station.

Except for the part where everything was a bit oversized, the train station would have looked right at home on Earth. The side of the building next to the tracks was open, with patterns of rectangles on the floor that Sam guessed would unfold into steps once the train arrived. Along the far side of the room were long benches, and between them were automated kiosks. Panels, currently dark, hung on the wall. Likely they could be used to call up maps or schedules. The place was clean, like everything on this planet was, and aside from Sam's party, it was empty.

Humans and livestock took a seat. Kel busied herself at a kiosk for a couple minutes before she joined them.

"A short wait," she said. "The system isn't too busy now."

"And this train has a livestock car?" Clint asked.

Again, Kel gave a puzzled frown like the humans were missing something obvious. "Of course. We have two animals. So we need an animal car. I said this."

A short wait later, Sam got it. The train didn't pull up at the station — the material of the tracks surged upward and _created_ it.

"Oh," Clint said. "You said we need a livestock car. So we got a livestock car. Gotcha."

"It was a long time since I was on Earth," Kel said. "I forget that your systems don't work this way."

"Nah, our trains generally stay… materialized."

Two cars manifested themselves. They were both made of sleek grey metal, with rows of frosted windows. Like Sam had expected, steps popped up conveniently just below the doors.

Kel headed for the second car first and hauled open the long sliding door, while Wanda and Sam collected the animals. Sam was getting the hang of this planet's tech by now, so he wasn't all that surprised when the car began as a bare compartment, which Kel transformed with brisk gestures into two adjacent stalls like the ones at the hostel. George and Ursula, who were also getting the hang of this, readily climbed into the car and settled down in their respective spaces. Ursula nosed the knob that produced a slurry of some kind of feed, and started lapping it up from the trough.

Next, Kel led the humans up the steps to the first car. It, too, started off as a featureless metal box. She summoned six comfortable seats with privacy curtains between them, a deep blue carpet down the center aisle, and some darkened monitors on the walls. At the back of the compartment was the food dispenser, and a cubicle that became the bathroom.

Once everyone had settled in, Kel entered some commands into the panel at the front of the car. With a slight jolt, and just the barest hum of noise, the train disembarked.

Jean asked, "Where are we heading, and how long is the trip?"

Kel dropped into the sixth chair and tapped the screen next to her. It lit up and displayed a map. Routes were shown in green against a pale grey background, and black dots that had to be cities were labeled in a script that of course Sam couldn't read. The train's position was marked in orange.

"z'Ritel." Kel pointed. "Not quite half the day. I think we stop there, let the animals walk a little. From there, another half the day to z'Reshen. After this…" She dragged the map to the left, and sucked in air through her teeth. "Small towns. sh'Terril, sh'Trennek, d'Mala. Better not to stop there. A long day, but there is a line all the way to j'Klomora." Her finger moved a solid jump south.

"We'll trust your judgment, of course," said Jean. "Where's our destination relative to this?"

Kel pinched her fingers and the screen zoomed out. Way, way out. At the bottom of the new image, beneath what was now a dense network of green lines, the grey of the background was broken by a red boundary. "Here is the start of Tor's territory."

Sam whistled. "This is gonna take a lot of trains."

Natasha leaned back in her chair and stretched out her legs. "We'll just have to find something good to talk about."

 


	6. Two Months After

The first text was nothing but a flame emoji, which baffled the hell out of him for a second. It was followed by a date, time and place.

Tony wondered why they were doing this in Portland, Oregon of all places. A subtle wink to Mt. Hood, where it had all started? Or maybe just a piece of territory she was familiar with for unrelated reasons.

In any event, he'd made it into town discreetly — yes, he was capable of it — and proceeded as instructed to the food court of a downtown shopping center. It was 10:30am on a Saturday morning, and the place was bustling but not packed.

He found an empty seat and settled in to watch the crowd. Dressed down like he was, he didn't get a second look. People didn't expect to see either Tony Stark or Iron Man sitting in an uncomfortable metal chair outside of a Cinnabon.

She was late. A good ten minutes, in fact. Long enough that Tony began to wonder if he'd walked into some kind of trap.

He was just on the verge of asking FRIDAY to tap into the local security cameras when a Starbucks cup was set down on the other side of the table, and a familiar figure slid down into the free chair.

She was dressed casually: black trousers and a black button-down shirt over a grey T-shirt, and a plain black ball cap atop it all. It was the first time that Tony had ever seen her in something besides the labor camp uniform or combat fatigues. Civilian clothes. Like she was just another citizen out for a stroll. The sight brought with it an unexpected sense of finality, like the door to Venen-ka had only just that moment been shut.

"I take it you saw my signal fire," Jean said.

"That I did," said Tony. "How was your trip?"

She smiled.

 


	7. Three Months After

So this was absolutely the _worst thing_ that could have _possibly_ happened.

(Well. All right. Not the _worst_ thing. That would have been May finding out. But Ned finding out was almost as bad.)

"The spider's dead, Ned," Peter sighed.

"Oh."

They both pulled up short as they reached the intersection, because just across the street was what was left of Mr. Delmar's bodega. Technically Peter was supposed to be talking to Happy now, for day-to-day stuff. But he was pretty sure he needed to bring this one to Mr. Stark directly. Those weapons were way too dangerous to be on the streets, and Happy… didn't always get when things were important.

"You were here?" Ned asked.

"Yeah."

"You could have died."

He'd been a lot more worried about making sure no one _else_ died, but… yeah.

Peter barely had time to think that over, though, before Ned seized on a new idea. "Wait. Spider-Man went through the portal — you know, when it came to Queens? That was you?"

"Yeah."

"That was _you_?"

"Yeah."

"You were on an alien planet?"

"Yeah."

"Did you meet any aliens?"

"Yeah."

"Were they, like, giant, hideous tentacle monsters?"

"No." Except — well, the fireball squids. "Okay, this one kind basically was, but mostly no."

"Was there really a war?"

Peter shifted his grip on his textbooks. ( _So_ stupid, losing his backpack again.) "Yeah."

"Did you kill anyone?"

He glared. " _Dude_."

"What?" Ned blinked at him in surprise. "If they were aliens, it doesn't… I mean, it doesn't count, right? And if they were trying to kill you…"

Peter clenched his jaw. He knew he shouldn't be so angry. Ned hadn't been there. Ned hadn't had time to think about _any_ of this. He was just… saying stuff.

But it was _important_ , it _mattered_ , the things that had happened over there. It wasn't like a video game where you killed the bad guys for points.

"One of my friends there was an alien," he said tightly, "and yeah, it counts."

"Okay," Ned said. "Then what did you do?"

Peter took a breath… and no words came out. How could he possibly explain it all?

"I did… wagons," he said.

Ned screwed up his face. " _Wagons_?"

"Yeah. There was the camp where we lived, right, and then there was this enemy base out on the coast. We took it over — some of the others did the fighting that time, not me — and that meant that we got all their supplies. But we had to move everything back to camp, and the only way to do that was with wagons. Pulled by oxen." Peter paused, remembering Flopsy and Mopsy — and they'd all been either Flopsy or Mopsy, and Black Widow had always known which was which. "Well, sort of oxen," he said. "It was five days each way. I did seven trips."

"You did ten weeks… of oxen and wagons."

"Yeah."

"Is that, like, Avenger hazing or something?"

Peter rolled his eyes. "There was only one thing we could eat over there, and that was these grains. Do you know how much grain a hundred thirty people need to eat in a month?"

"...No," Ned said.

"Lots. Bins-full. If we'd run out, everyone would have starved. So. Yeah, I did wagons."

"Okay."

They started walking again. They were almost at the school, and Peter _really_ didn't want to be talking about all this in the hallways where anyone could hear them. Hopefully Ned would just leave it there.

Except it wasn't exactly fair, _only_ explaining about the wagons, was it?

"There was also this time I helped with the giant leopard," he said.

Ned perked up again. "And when you say giant…"

"It was twenty-five feet tall."

" _Seriously_?"

"Yeah. It would have swallowed Hawkeye if I hadn't webbed him up into a tree."

"That's _awesome_ ," Ned said, and Peter grinned. That part _had_ been pretty awesome.

Then Ned asked, "Do you lay eggs?"

"What? _No_!"

 

* * *

 

"How's it going?"

"You tell me."

Rhodey looked down. His bare feet were resting on the carpet. He tightened his hands on the armrests of his chair. A few seconds later, his toes flexed, every last one of them.

Tony clapped him firmly on the shoulder. "All right. Now we're getting somewhere."

 

* * *

 

Peter was starting to think that actually, May finding out couldn't have been worse than this. Because Ned hadn't given him a break for one _second_ all day, never mind that whole mess in gym class.

(And yeah, okay, maybe Liz kind of had a crush on him… except she didn't _know_ it was him, and he didn't know how he could ever tell her it was him, and… _ugh_ , the whole thing was so complicated.)

Anyway.

And it was weird to be thinking this much about the stuff that had happened on Venen-ka. He'd seen Mr. Stark a couple times since then, and texted with him a couple times more, and Mr. Stark asked him every time if he was doing all right with everything. Like, if he was settling into Earth life okay and whatever. And Peter had been, he was pretty sure. It took a lot of work, figuring how to be Spider-Man and Peter Parker. That was what he mostly thought about these days. The portal thing was done with.

But now it was all back in his head again. The good stuff, and the crappy stuff.

He and Ned were back at Peter's place, hanging out in his room, because Ned somehow hadn't run out of Spider-Man questions yet, plus he was still trying to pitch this party idea. Peter ended up telling him a bit more about Venen-ka — the fun parts, like putting up the safe travel corridor, and the training runs he'd done with Kel. (Not the first one, with the mud, because he didn't want to talk about that. But the other ones, when she'd taught him about hunting and tracking.) Ned agreed that all that stuff must have been pretty cool.

But it wasn't explaining the whole thing, was it? Not really.

"There was this other time, right at the end of the war," he said. "And we were winning, you know? By a _lot_. Even though the enemy had way more soldiers, Jean and Captain America and Mr. Stark were too smart for them. So it was going pretty good, but then — I told you how Kel was one of our main fighters, right?"

Ned nodded.

"She was off running missions on her own. Somehow, I don't know how they did it, but the enemy captured her." Just saying it brought back the echo of the… the shock and dread and panic all rising at once from the moment he'd seen Humphrey on the road. "The enemy leader, he came to the camp and told us he had her, and that we had to surrender or he was gonna have her killed."

Ned's eyes were wide. "Okay, but you didn't do it, right?"

"No, of course we couldn't do it," Peter said. "But we also… I mean, we didn't know where they were keeping her — we could guess a little, but not exactly — and it would have taken us days to get there anyway. So we couldn't…"

He trailed off. This was the part where Jean had told them all that she was… that she would let Kel die. If rescuing her put everyone else in too much danger.

In that moment, Peter'd hated Jean, absolutely _hated_ her.

But maybe he didn't want to talk about that.

"Anyway," he said, "we figured out that the only thing we could do was beat the rest of the army, and do it so fast that they couldn't send up the signal to kill her. And we _did_ it." His fists clenched in his lap. "All in one night, we drew them out and destroyed their tanks, and then we blew up the bridge, and anyone who was left got dumped in the ravine."

" _Whoa_."

"Yeah. We _won_. Then we had to go and rescue her. It was me, Mr. Stark, Black Widow and Vision. And when we found her…" Peter remembered what the place looked like, every detail, because every detail had been important. "There was… um, there was this tiny cave in the rocks. They walled it off with stones, except for a little window, and Kel was inside."

He remembered the sight, and also the smell, and the way he hadn't been able to hear anything from inside — not a breath or a heartbeat.

"I told Mr. Stark I couldn't see," Peter said, "but… I could, a little." He gestured from his shoulder down to his hip. "She was cut open like that, all across her body, with claw marks. And the soldiers, they, um. Pinned her to the wall. With these metal spikes through her arms and legs."

He hadn't really talked about it with anyone before, because Kel was the one who'd _lived_ it, and Mr. Stark… well, he'd read the word 'ashen', like someone's face being ashen, but he'd never understood what it meant until he'd seen Mr. Stark come out of the cave.

Ned was hanging on his every word, which had been cool when Peter had been talking about chimpanzees and jellyfish, but seemed not really important now.

"Was she… still alive?" he asked.

"Yeah." Peter swallowed. "She was alive. Awake, too, at least a little. Six days. That's how long they kept her like that."

"That's… really horrible."

"Yeah. That's why…" He gestured like he could try and wrap up _all of it_ in one package, even though the whole point was that he couldn't. "Some of it, over there… some of it was amazing. Like being on the planet, and all the different kinds of plant tech they had, and training with the Avengers and building things and outsmarting the enemy. Sometimes it was great! But other times, it was the most horrible things you can think of, happening to people you care about, and not being able to stop it."

After a long pause, Ned said, "That sounds really stressful."

"Yeah."

"And after you've been through something stressful, I hear it helps to do something _fun_ , like go to a _party_ , and I bet there won't be any alien soldiers at all at Liz's party."

Peter leaned his head back and groaned.

 


	8. Four Months After

Steve supposed it was lucky that he'd had ten months on Venen-ka to practice not being in command. Turning himself in had left him entirely at the mercy of other people's decisions, and it was a position that he didn't exactly…

Well, all right. He hated it.

However. He did believe — he still believed — that most people, if they were given the opportunity, would do choose to do the right thing. He'd taken the first step. All he could do now was sit in his temporary refuge in Canada, and watch it all play out.

It began with Tony. He stayed out of the public eye for the first month or so, since of course he had his own life to try and put back together. Steve suspected that he also didn't want to draw focus from the abductees, who deserved to have their stories heard. But once the initial wave of interviews and analyses died down, Tony hit the media with what Steve could only describe as a charm offensive. He released his own written statement, which sidestepped the personal topics but went into considerable detail about the war. He also sat for an hour-long televised interview.

Steve watched, of course. Tony looked perfectly at ease in his three-piece suit. He leaned back in the dark leather chair, one ankle casually hooked over the other knee.

"Look, we were nine against an army," he said. "And some of us were not — _are_ not — soldiers. What was it like? It was _terrifying_. A hundred twenty innocent lives riding on every decision, every move, every skirmish. And I'm telling you right now, that exact group of people is the _only_ group of people who could have won. Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Wanda Maximoff. Vision, Kel, Jean."

His interviewer, a polished, charming blonde woman, suggested, "And Tony Stark?"

Tony chuckled. "Yeah, him too. Whatever mistakes we all might have made in the past, the fact is, when the Avengers are together, they can do the impossible. I think that's worth something."

This brought on a renewed interest in the Venen-ka war, which in turn paved the way for Steve's written account — which he did run past his lawyers first, as well as Tony — to go out a couple weeks later. The public continued to talk. Opinions, by and large, began to shift in the Avengers' favor.

Even so, all the conversation in the world probably wouldn't have saved Steve from prison if T'Challa hadn't lent his efforts as well.

The global political landscape was still adjusting to the revelation that Wakanda was the most technologically advanced country on Earth. International relations didn't change overnight; at this stage, Wakanda was hosting state visits and granting a small number of tourist visas. At the same time, under the direction of T'Challa's sister Shuri, they were developing their technological outreach programs.

T'Challa held his peace on the portal incident, in public at least, for the first few months. But once the conversation surrounding Tony and Steve's reports had ebbed, it was his turn to come out swinging. To the UN, he proposed a revision process for the Sokovia Accords that would include input from the Avengers. In public, he called for leniency for the fugitives.

"The Avengers serve a unique and critical role in our planet's defense," he said. "All of us made mistakes during the incident last May, myself included. Don't lock them away — allow them to learn and improve."

Obviously T'Challa would never be so crass as to say that countries that objected to his proposals would be dropped to the bottom of the list for Wakandan technological assistance. For that matter, Steve didn't think that T'Challa would even consider such a punitive measure. His desire to position Wakanda as a force for good in the world took precedence over championing the Avengers.

But there was no question that a request from the king of Wakanda held considerably more weight these days than it had before. Wakandan support solved problems.

(Of course, not everyone liked it when problems were solved. The people who profited off those problems, for example. Much later, Steve would wish that he'd remembered that.)

In any event, the months went by and the political options narrowed, until one day Steve found himself in a room with his legal team on one side and federal prosecutors on the other, negotiating the Avengers' surrender.

Some sort of confinement was unavoidable. Steve accepted it. The two sets of lawyers finally settled on house arrest: eighteen months for the rest of the team, and two years for him.

Things moved quickly after that. Just a few days later, Steve stepped out of a van in front of the residence at Avengers Compound. Nat, Sam and Wanda were with him. They'd already said their goodbyes to Clint and Scott, who would be serving their time in their respective homes.

It was a crisp, clear autumn day, and Steve took a deep breath. He'd stood in more or less the same spot once before, just after Sokovia, and referred to this place as home. Looking back on it, the statement hadn't been one of acceptance, but of resignation. His real home — his real life — was gone. All he had left were the trappings of Captain America. Sure, call it home. Why not.

They all knew how well _that_ had turned out.

It was time to try again. Steve looked up at the Avengers logo and considered what a home could mean. His old life was gone. Maybe this was the place where he started to build a new one.

Sam stepped up beside him. "You okay?"

"Getting there," Steve said.

The four of them weren't alone, of course. They had been transported to the compound by three FBI agents, who exited the van wearing identical expressions of disgruntlement. The prisoners would be serving their sentence in what was undeniably a luxurious residence on a huge compound, and apparently this wasn't sitting well with everyone.

The door to the residence opened, and Tony walked out to meet them. Vision walked beside him, through the wall. His new leg was vibranium silver from the knee down — a deliberate choice, Steve knew, because he was still capable of transforming his entire body when he wanted to.

"Do you need me to sign for those?" Tony asked.

The senior agent ignored that and turned to the four prisoners. "Let me reiterate that any movement beyond the property lines constitutes a violation of your plea agreement and may result in penalties up to and including a prison term in excess of thirty years."

"We understand," Steve said.

With palpable reluctance, the agent shifted back to acknowledge Tony. "While I have you here, Mr. Stark, I'd like to speak to you about upgrading the security measures on the perimeter."

"That'll be a short conversation," Tony replied, "because my answer is no. They're all wearing trackers. You know where they are. Beefing up your security isn't my job."

The agent's face got a little more pursed. He changed targets. "In that case, Mister… Vision, since you reside here, you can—"

"No, in point of fact, I cannot," Vision said, and glanced at Wanda. "I put myself in a similar position once before. It was an error. These are my teammates, and I will not be responsible for supervising their confinement."

The youngest member of the escort team snapped, "Then how are we supposed to believe that you people are actually going to stay where we put you?"

"Because you asked us to," Steve said, "and we've agreed."

"Hey, Vision, see these folks back to the gate, will you?" Tony said. "Hate for them to lose their way."

Once the van had disappeared around the bend, Tony waved his arm and led the group of new arrivals inside.

Steve's pace slowed as he absorbed the sight. Just off to the left was the conference room where that meeting with Ross had started it all. A strange symmetry, to be back here again.

"Well." Natasha made a show of taking a look around the common room. "I can think of worse places to spend eighteen months."

Wanda asked, "How are George and Ursula doing?"

"Oh, right, them," Tony said, with huff of annoyance that was too exaggerated to be genuine. "Do I want to know how you got the two of them out of Brazil?"

"Probably not," said Sam.

"Anyway, they're fine. Giving the lawn maintenance bots something extra to do. But since you mention it, here are the house rules: the horse stays outside, and the cheetah does _not_ roam free. I had a chunk of the northeast sector penned off — spacious, room to run, stuff to climb, don't worry. We have hay, oats and raw meat delivered every week, which is _very_ normal, not at all suspicious. And if they break loose and start terrorizing upstate New York, then I have officially never seen either of them before in my life. Clear?"

Wanda smiled. "Thanks, Tony."

"Yeah. Well." The wave of Tony's hand encompassed the residence. "Cable, phone, internet, all the comforts. Secure lines available. You've been here before, you know how everything works. And just log it in the system if you need something, run out of something…"

"We know," Steve said. "We'll be fine."

"I'm gonna… I figure I'll let you all get settled in a bit. Maybe drop by again in a week or so? Unless that's— unless you don't want—"

"No, that's fine," Steve said quickly. "If you're gone longer than that, your horse will be worried."

"He is not my horse!" Tony snapped. "He is a ridiculous, free-loading sparkly _pest_ , and I still can't believe—"

"George missed you, too," said Sam. "He was moping the entire trip."

"Despondent," Natasha said.

Tony stabbed a finger in the direction of the corridor. "All right, every one of you needs to go to your room and think about what you've done. Get out. Go."

The split-second sidelong glance he threw in Steve's direction was enough. Steve stayed.

Once they were alone, Tony cleared his throat awkwardly and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "There's no hidden surveillance," he said to the wall to Steve's left. "No recordings on the premises, and no one's monitoring communications. For… um. Any private conversations you might be having."

Steve drew a quick breath. He didn't know how Tony knew, and he knew better than to push for more than that one oblique reference.

"Thank you," he said.

"And I was serious before. No extra security systems. I might be your landlord, but I'm not your jailer. If you have to break the perimeter, you're not going to run into anything that you don't already know about. But maybe — I'm just putting this out there — if a world-ending cataclysm is nigh and averting it is worth violating your sentencing conditions? A quick text would be polite. Five seconds' warning before the shitstorm lands on my head. You know?"

"I promise," said Steve, and grinned. "And I'll try to remember not to put coffee grounds in the garbage disposal."

"I _knew_ it was you!"

 

* * *

 

When Steve sat down at the desk in his bedroom and accessed a secure line, it was midafternoon local time, which of course made it late evening in Wakanda. The screen lit up, and he felt the schoolboy grin creep out across his face, just like always.

To say that Bucky, too, had a life to rebuild was an understatement that bordered on the obscene. Steve had had some very stern talks with himself about not allowing memory to cloud his perceptions of the man who was in front of him. Bucky had changed. He'd been through things that Steve couldn't possibly comprehend. The two of them needed to get to know each other as the people they were today.

And yet… And yet it was _Bucky_. His Bucky. A precious, impossible gift.

He looked good. Not as haunted as he had been in the early days. Though Steve had to admit, he was still getting used to the long hair.

"Hey, Buck."

"Hey, Steve. How's your first day of house arrest going?"

"Not so bad," Steve said. "It's a pretty big house. What's new with you?"

 


	9. Six Months After

Dinner was lovely.

Pepper didn't just mean the catering. She also, however reluctantly, meant the company.

She'd had every intention of disliking Jean, though perhaps not for the obvious reasons. Tony had told her quite a bit about his time on the other side of the portal, including the two separate instances when he and Jean had shared a bed. Pepper didn't… well, it was still a little hard to decipher what she did and didn't feel about the idea, but at a minimum, she didn't doubt Tony's assertion that it had been platonic. No, the part that wounded her was the reminder that those twenty months of Tony's life had been profoundly influential, and she'd been shut out of them. Trapped on the wrong planet, where the time had passed practically in the blink of an eye. No matter how much Tony told her, it would never change the fact that Jean had shared those experiences with him and Pepper hadn't.

All right, there was some jealousy at work. But it still wasn't her primary issue.

Jean, for her part, turned out to be polite, intelligent and thoughtful. She came armed with more than a cursory knowledge of the tech market, and engaged Pepper with questions on some of SI's recent acquisitions. They'd spun off from there, all three of them, chatting about clean energy and other technological challenges, and so had passed a comfortable couple of hours.

After dinner, the party moved from the dining room to the lounge. Pepper would have preferred to meet in a restaurant, at least to start with, but Jean was still wanted for questioning over her role in the portal incident and would not appear in public. Instead, they were in Tony's New York penthouse, which was a recent acquisition after he'd sold Stark Tower. Jean paused in front of the window to admire the view of Manhattan, which Pepper had to agree was spectacular.

She was a muscular woman and unapologetically so, which Pepper respected. Her blouse was a bit oversized, since otherwise it wouldn't have fit across her shoulders. The three-quarter-length sleeves showed off broad forearms and powerful wrists. In flats, Jean was still taller than Pepper would have been in heels. She wore her years well, but Pepper guessed that she was older than she looked: Tony's age at least, if not a few years more. In voice and in posture, she presented herself with quiet confidence.

Not that any of that was the _point_ , exactly. (Not that Pepper was sure exactly what the point was.)

Well, no — the point was that _this_ was the person who, with no military training or enhanced abilities, took command of the Avengers, led them in a months-long war, and defeated a far more numerous enemy without losing anyone on her side. It was a story to which the global response had been a collective "…Really?" But having met Jean in person, Pepper was beginning to understand it.

Tony came up beside her with a quizzical look. Pepper shook her head and gave him a reassuring smile. The two of them settled on the couch, comfortably shoulder to shoulder, and after a moment, Jean left the window and sat across from them in one of the chairs.

"I don't know about you," Tony said, and sipped his espresso, "but I'm not even close to finished reminding myself of all the types of food out there that aren't tasteless mush."

It was the first time that any of them had alluded to the portal.

Jean smiled. "This planet does have quite a bit to recommend it."

"Are you settling in all right?" Tony asked. "Back in the swing of whatever it is you do all day?"

Pepper caught the quick glance in her direction.

"I keep busy," Jean said. "The memories are… receding. Some more easily than others. How about you?"

"About the same," he said. "Admittedly, that's my twenty months to your thirty, which I guess makes you three halves as well adjusted as I am. Not a shock." His free hand squeezed Pepper's shoulder. "It, uh… helps to have people I can talk to about it. You know?"

"I'm not alone, Tony," she replied. "But I appreciate the thought."

The conversation hit a lull, and Pepper knew that it was time.

"I assume that Peter spoke to you," she said to Jean.

"He did," Jean said. "But I can see that you haven't…"

"No. I wanted to meet you first."

Tony cleared his throat pointedly. "Okay, while I'm thrilled that the two of you are getting along to the extent of having cryptic conversations that don't include me, why are you having cryptic conversations that don't include me?"

With a tilt of her head, Jean yielded the floor.

Pepper reached up to take Tony's hand in hers. "Jean knows about Extremis," she said.

His whole body tensed. " _Does_ she, now."

"So does Peter," said Jean.

"Peter, your Peter? The one I still haven't forgiven for sending a _fifteen-year-old_ Spider-Man through the portal after us? _That_ Peter?"

"Yes, that Peter. And believe me, I spoke to him at length about the Spider-Man issue." Jean's tone was gentle. "You may want to ration your ire until you've heard all the news."

Pepper's heart began to race. She hadn't said this aloud since the day it had happened.

"Jean's people aren't the only ones who know." She steeled herself. "So does Thaddeus Ross."

" _Ross_? How do you—"

"He threatened me. When he was trying to keep us from following the portal."

Tony jolted off the couch and paced furiously across the room. He stopped in front of the window, both fists clenched.

But then he drew a slow breath. Another. Turned back to face the room.

"Sorry," he said. "Sorry. That was… unexpected."

"For me, too," Pepper said softly.

Immediately he crossed back and gathered her hands in his. "Are you okay?"

"I'm okay." Except her heart was still pounding. "I've been better."

Tony pulled her in close, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. To Jean, he said, "I know Ross tried to sabotage the final portal. Probably would have murdered us all, if he'd succeeded. And somehow he cut a deal so that everyone's keeping quiet." He wrapped his arm a little more snugly around Pepper's waist. "I guess I'm starting to understand how he managed it. Of course, if his secret comes out some other way, he'll have no incentive to keep this one. And I suddenly have a very compelling reason to help keep _you_ out of the public eye, don't I?"

Jean waited a measured pause before asking, "Do you think that I would ever use this to manipulate you?"

Pepper felt Tony take another breath. "No," he said. "How did you find out?"

"After the incident in Florida, I searched for survivors, and found one."

"This person still around?"

"No. Not anymore."

Pepper flinched. Somewhere deep inside her, the fire stirred. She knew — oh, god, she knew _exactly_ how that story must have ended. How her story would have ended, if not for Tony.

"Could Ross have gotten this from you?" Tony asked Jean. "What's your filing system like? If your security needs to be…" But he trailed off when Jean tapped her temple. " _Seriously_?"

"The purpose isn't to build a database," she said. "It never was. If a person is safe, I don't need to remember them. Whereas those who aren't safe tend to be memorable."

"How many enhanced do you know, anyway?"

"Worldwide?"

"Yeah."

"None at all," Jean said. "I'm not sure what you mean."

Tony sighed. "I walked into that one."

Jean shifted her focus. "Pepper, I regret having violated your privacy," she said. "At the time, the possibility that someone with the unstable version of the formula could still be at large seemed to me to merit investigation. But that clearly isn't your circumstance. You don't need my help. Your life is none of my business. I can't unlearn what I learned, but if you need never to see me again, I will respect that."

"You don't tell each other's secrets."

Jean inclined her head.

"Tony and I have talked a lot about what happened on the other side of the portal," Pepper said. "He told me that you saved his life."

"He saved mine every bit as much," Jean replied. "We all protected each other in combat."

"True," Tony said, "except I wasn't just talking about combat."

"I think our lives are each other's business now," said Pepper. "At least, I'm hoping to get to know you better."

A smile creased Jean's eyes. "I'd like that."

"Not to mention, if Ross finds his star on the rise again, I think we could both use allies."

"You're right," she said. "But let's not allow Ross and his ilk to ruin our evening."

"Have you heard from Kel?" Tony asked.

"Not yet. When I left, she believed that her father would support some manner of diplomatic overture toward Earth, but she expected the discussions between him and the other _hirethe_ to move slowly." With a wave of her hand, Jean conveyed a certain helplessness in the face of the enormity of interplanetary politics. "I say they should take as long as they need. We all want this to be done right."

 


	10. Twelve Months After, Part 1

Humankind had been confronted by the reality of alien life before. Everyone knew about Thor; everyone knew about the attacks in New York and Greenwich. But this was different. This was _it_. _A pivotal moment in world history_ , as the commentators all seemed to put it.

First contact.

Natasha and the rest of the Avengers, along with hundreds of millions of other people, watched it on television.

Officially, it was the Terran-Brenith First Contact Ceremony, but a moment's consideration showed the name to be a lie. There would have been exchanges of information and diplomatic aides for months prior to this. Both sides had to learn enough about each other not to commit a grievous offense on live TV. What they were performing now amounted to a rigidly choreographed dance.

Still, the messages that each side chose to send by that dance could be instructive.

The ceremony took place in the General Assembly Hall at the UN headquarters in New York. That decision alone was the outcome of some vicious political battles: factions had formed up in support of each of the other three regional UN headquarter sites, plus Brazil had put in a bid in its capacity as the location of the Earth-j'Brenn transit point. The US had finally won out by virtue of being the best able to mount the necessary security arrangements and absorb the corresponding costs.

The room was packed with diplomats and heads of state. Media crews lined the walls. T'Challa was of course in the audience with the Wakandan delegation; the telecast had shown him briefly a few minutes earlier.

Slowly, the crowd settled into their seats. Once the room was quiet, the camera panned over to the left-hand door.

The Brenithi entered single-file: an honor guard twenty strong. The first one stopped just inside the door, and the rest of the line unfurled like a whip. They wore black clothing that was heavily decorated with gold designs, no two quite the same, plus multiple pieces of thick gold jewelry that sported clan crests and gemstones. Natasha could already see a concession to differing cultural standards: Brenith formal occasions generally called for bladed weapons, but all of them were unarmed.

The last figure to enter was a jarring contrast to her fellow Brenithi. Superficially, she was a Caucasian human with a missing hand and a ritually scarred face. Standing next to a seven-foot-tall red alien, she looked tiny, fragile and pale.

"She's the one who was with you on the other planet?" Rhodes asked.

"Yeah, that's Kel," Tony said. "She stands out in a crowd."

Kel's inclusion in the honor guard could have been spun as a positive gesture: _See, there's a person like you whom we accept as one of us._ But Natasha didn't think that was the message at all. She was pretty sure it was, _This is how you look compared to us — like children._ Many people would claim to be kind to children. A few of them even managed it. But it was not the sort of thing one should count on.

Natasha and her traveling companions had had almost a month to acclimatize themselves to Brenith physical features. Tony, Steve and Rhodes were seeing this for the first time.

"Are they all that size?" Steve asked.

Sam replied, "These are the normal ones. We're getting to the big ones."

Kel stepped neatly into place at the end of the line, next to the raised platform at the front of the room. The honor guard came to attention, and paused.

Then Kel gave a cry: " _Ni'nissich katal!_ " All twenty guards dropped to one knee and raised their hands before their faces.

Three new Brenithi entered the chamber.

"No one does that when _I_ walk into a room," Tony said.

These were the _hirethe_ who, between them, held the majority of Brenith territory and commanded most of their military forces. As befitting their status, they wore no ornamentation except for their respective clan crests. They walked with slow, measured strides past the kneeling line, and stepped onto the platform.

"There's Tor," Sam said. "The third one."

"Tor, as in Kel's father?" Tony asked. He leaned back on the couch. " _That's_ her old man?"

"Yeah. We met him, if you want to call it that. He looked us over like he wasn't convinced we were housebroken. Sure as hell didn't lower himself to talk to us."

j'Brenithi were like lobsters — they never stopped growing. Tor was the junior member of the triumvirate. The other two, by their height, were even older.

And there was an amusing detail that hadn't come up until they'd been on Kel's planet for over a week: a Brenith who survived their combat service in early adulthood had the potential to live for centuries. In human years, Tor was over six hundred, and he was barely middle-aged.

Clint had turned to Kel, very slowly, and asked, "How old are _you_ , again?"

"Much less," she'd said. "As far as I can tell, I age like one of you. Some said it was cruel of Tor to create a child that had no chance to live a full life." She'd shrugged. "But I already survived longer than many."

The camera tracked the Brenith leader as they stopped at the center of the platform. Tor and the remaining _hireth_ moved to flanking positions behind them.

" _Ti'gith_ ," said the leader, and the honor guard stood up again.

Kel took a few steps forward. "Human representatives," she announced, "it is my honor to speak the names of those who stand before you: Tor verak Wyn veresh Kel, hireth j'Brenithi; Bri verak Dor veresh Sen, hireth j'Brenithi; and Kith verak Tan veresh Des, ti-hireth j'Brenithi, head of clans. On their behalf, I offer gratitude for your generous hospitality, and I express our hope that this day marks the beginning of a mutually beneficial relationship between our worlds."

That wasn't Kel's normal syntax. A rehearsed speech, obviously. Natasha wondered who their speechwriter was.

The three Brenithi inclined their heads to the crowd, and stepped back to take their seats at the table of honor. The UNSG mounted the platform from the other side and began his equally formalized and formulaic response.

The two races, human and Brenith, weren't all that different, at the core. They would act as allies for exactly as long as an alliance was more profitable than a conflict. It was obvious what humanity stood to gain: access to technology, perhaps even spacefaring capabilities. It wasn't as clear to her what j'Brenn would get from Earth, that wouldn't be easier to take.

They would find out soon enough. The Brenithi were here, and ostensibly at least, they were here as friends. But Natasha wasn't taking her eyes off of them for one second.

 

* * *

 

One of them was named Larry. Ross wasn't sure which. The other one he couldn't remember at all. In the privacy of his thoughts, they were Larry and Moe.

The DOS had an Office of Brenith Affairs now, though staffing was still a work in progress. There had been lower-lever exchanges leading up to the official visit, starting with basic language files and translation programs. The Breniths had sent over briefing materials concerning their history and culture, and most of the UN countries, including the US, had reciprocated. More recently, a few aides had crossed in each direction to participate in more comprehensive cultural immersion.

The sum total of all that information was presently being delivered to him by a couple of sweaty, babbling kids.

"Don't try to shake hands," said the one who was Larry today.

"Absolutely," said Moe. "Don't try to shake hands."

"In their culture, pressing bare palms together… well."

"Well."

Ross waited. "Well?"

"That sort of gesture, um." Larry tugged at his collar. "It could be construed as… inappropriately personal, if you take my meaning, sir."

"Suggestive."

"A proposition. Of a personal nature."

"Bordering on sexual harassment."

He sighed. "Yes, fine."

"In fact, they have essentially no concept of casual social touch. It just isn't done."

"Not in public," said Moe.

"Not in public, no. The distance that constitutes polite personal space is considerably larger for them than for us. Stay at least an arm's length away — it won't read as cold."

As if he'd planned on cozying up to a bunch of oversized red-skinned aliens. "What is the accepted greeting?" Ross asked.

"A nod." Larry bobbed his head. "Like a bow."

"But not _fully_ a bow," said Moe, who bobbed lower. "That would be too much."

"Too much, that's right. Incline your head, lower your eyes for a moment. Sometimes you'll see one of them greet another by tapping the first two fingers of their left hand to the center of their forehead." Larry demonstrated that one, too. "You don't want to do that, sir. It conveys… how to put this."

"Non-binding acknowledgment of a social superior," said Moe.

"Yes. Non-binding. Thank you. It's a greeting from one who acknowledges their own inferior standing under the current circumstances, without necessarily conferring a long-term obligation."

"Sort of."

"Sort of."

_Sort of_. Wonderful. "Anything else?" Ross asked.

"Yes, sir," said Larry. "Don't display your palms. Deliberately showing an open hand to someone is a vulgarity approximately along the lines of giving them the finger."

"The back of the hand is fine," said Moe.

"The back of the hand is fine, yes. Ironically, they likely wouldn't take any offense to literally being given the finger. It's remarkable how the same gesture can have completely different connotations in—"

"Save it for the report," Ross said. "No hands, no palms. What else?"

"Pronouns."

"Pronouns."

"Pronouns?"

"Yes, sir," said Larry. "You don't know any of the delegates well enough to use gendered pronouns."

"Meaning 'he', 'she', 'him', 'her'—"

"Yes, _thank_ you," Ross snapped.

"You should avoid those words, sir," Larry said doggedly. "Gendered pronouns are only used for informal speech. If you need to refer to someone—"

"In the third person," said Moe.

"Yes, _obviously_ in the third person. If you need to refer to someone in the third person, the gender-neutral option they've chosen is—"

"In English, at least."

"—is 'they'. Or 'them', 'their', 'theirs' as appropriate. 'This is Kith. I met them yesterday.' For example. Or, it's always polite to use their names. They don't use titles to signify rank or position—"

"The name _is_ the rank," said Moe.

"The name _is_ the rank. Essentially. Yes. So whereas I would never refer to you as Thaddeus — sir — it is always correct to refer to Kith as Kith, regardless of the context."

"Well."

"Well."

Through gritted teeth, Ross again prompted, "Well?"

"Speaking someone's name is a gesture of respect," said Larry. "Speaking it too often can come across as…"

"Obsequious."

"Yes, obsequious. Submissive."

"Fawning."

"And you don't want that. Obviously."

"Obviously."

"Obv—" He stopped himself just in time.

"So the accepted middle ground is to find a short, gender-neutral phase that describes the individual," Larry said. "I think… is 'the _hireth_ ' acceptable?"

Moe scrolled down on his tablet. "Yes. 'The _hireth_ ' is permitted. Only for the _hirethe_ , of course."

"Of course. Likewise, 'the _shorath_ ' is suitable for all of their aides. And, conversely, please don't take offense if they refer to you obliquely in the same manner."

Hands, names, pronouns. The things he put up with. "And I'm told that these people don't eat?"

"Oh! Excellent point, sir."

"Excellent point, sir."

"Correct," said Larry. "As far as we've been able to ascertain, adults don't consume solid food. They drink a variety of flavored beverages, but these are thought of as snacks."

"Nonessential."

"Nonessential. Adults sustain themselves by feeding on the neural energy of prey animals, a process that occurs via direct skin contact."

"Hence the skin and touch taboos," said Moe.

"Hence the skin and touch taboos, yes. Only juveniles, whose teleneuropathic abilities are undeveloped, need to take in nourishment by mouth. The practice is… well, if you consider, by analogy…" Larry's face went red. "I mean, there are various biological necessities that you — that _one_ — that a human would not, generally speaking, in polite company—"

"It's scatological," said Moe.

"Yes, exactly."

"So I take it this reception won't have hors d'oeuvres," Ross said.

"There will be a variety of beverages available," Larry replied, "including some imported from j'Brenn. They're safe for human consumption, we tested that—"

"We tested that."

"—though the tastes are… unusual. And there will be a separate room with human food a short distance from the ballroom."

"Politely out of sight."

"Politely out of sight. Yes." Larry swiped some pages on his tablet, then craned his neck to look at Moe's. "I think… that should be everything."

"That should be everything."

Charming. Ross stood up and straightened his tie, and girded himself. There were a couple days of ceremonial nonsense ahead, while the various UN representatives made their pretty speeches and tried to sound relevant. The real work came afterward, when the tour of individual nations began.

Whatever else one could say about these aliens, they had technology. They had _weapons_. If they were open to trade, then his job was to make sure that the United States benefited and their enemies did not. If that meant putting up with a bunch of alien bullshit, so be it. The security of his country was worth any price.


	11. Twelve Months After, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains brief references to war crimes including genocide.

_Hey, kid. Drop by my place on Saturday. 3pm._

_Sure! Is this confidential Avenger stuff?_

_No, just a social call. Jean's in town._

_In that case, can I bring a friend?_

Tony squinted at the screen for a moment.

_Yeah, all right._

 

* * *

 

The kid really did bring a friend. This was going to be amusing.

"Once you're satisfied with the threshold," Tony said, "there are several hundred square feet of interior that might be of interest."

"This is Tony Stark's apartment," the boy, Ned, said, apparently to the universe at large. He hadn't moved from the doorway.

"Ned, come on, just relax," Peter said, and pulled his mask off. "It's fine, I've been here tons of times. Well, twice. It's just a normal apartment, okay?"

Rules weren't generally Tony's thing, but for this he had very strict rules. Eccentric billionaires should not have high school students hanging about their private residences. The kid always traveled to and from Tony's building in his Spider-Man guise, and used the rooftop access that was also Tony's departure platform. (The Ned inclusion raised some questions, but Tony would just have to hope that the two of them had been discreet.)

Ned was eventually coaxed inside and installed on a couch. Peter changed back into his street clothes, and joined them in the lounge.

"How's your aunt these days?" Tony asked him.

"Better," Peter said. "A lot less freaked out about stuff than she used to be. She's still pretty angry at you, though."

"Not surprising." There had been a _shitload_ of yelling on that particular day. "Anyway, there's some folks here I thought you might like to see."

His other two houseguests took their cue and made their appearance.

Peter grinned and bounced up off the couch again. "Kel! You're here! It's been _forever_!"

Kel smiled as well and met him with her standard wrist tap. "Hello, Peter. Very good to see you."

Jean followed a few paces behind. She and Peter had visited before, once with Tony's facilitation and a few more times on her own. Tony had heard — and this was just so _Jean_ that he couldn't even stand it — that she'd gone to see May to apologize for her part in the portal business. He'd checked satellite footage to make sure that Queens hadn't been replaced by a smoking crater; since it hadn't, he supposed the conversation must have gone pretty well.

"Who's your friend?" Jean asked once greetings were done.

"This is Ned," said Peter. "We caught that Vulture guy together last year — remember I told you about that?"

"Ned, of course." Jean approached him and genteelly offered her hand. "Peter speaks highly of you. My name is Jean."

"You're the most wanted woman on the _planet_ ," Ned breathed.

Peter glared. " _Dude_."

"Uh. I mean. Hi?"

It was not an inaccurate description. Jean, in absentia, had attained a level of notoriety that Tony usually found amusing. She was the mystery figure at the center of the portal incident — a woman who had acquired sensitive information and an array of powerful friends without making so much as a blip on the radar. An entire alphabet soup of government agencies wanted answers from her, and time had not diminished the urgency.

Tony sometimes wondered how she managed to move around New York — a city that was well surveilled — without getting caught. But he generally figured that it was better for him not to know.

"And this is Kel verak Tor, shorath j'Brenithi." Peter pronounced her proper name with care. "From j'Brenn. You know. The alien planet. Kel, this is my friend Ned."

"Ned," she said, and gave him a nod.

"An alien said my name. Hi there." He waved, and Peter quickly turned his hand backward so that his palm wouldn't show. "How do you like our planet?"

"I visited before this," Kel replied. "I enjoy it very much."

"Cool."

"I'm glad you were able to come on such short notice," Jean said to Peter. "We weren't sure if Kel would get any free time from her new job as a diplomat."

Kel waved her hand dismissively. "I'm a symbol, not a diplomat," she said. "My only job is to look human. Boring. I want to know what the rest of you do."

So they chatted. Kel turned out to have a lot of questions about high school, and that kept the two boys going for a while. Tony could see her struggling to get her head around the idea of childhood education that wasn't geared toward warfare. Since there was only so much that he and Jean could contribute to a conversation about gym class, the two of them sat together on the other couch and let the young people have their fun.

The conversation drifted from high school to Peter and Ned's shared Spider-Man escapades, and from there to teenage life in general. Kel, to all appearances, soaked up each story eagerly, which if nothing else seemed to give lie to her earlier assertion that she wasn't a diplomat.

Once she was caught up on the preceding year, Ned said, "So you look like one of us, but you're really one of them. The tall red guys. Right?"

"I'm a Brenith," Kel said. "Yes."

"And… we're going to be allies now? Like, with a peace treaty and ambassadors and everything?"

"Non-aggression treaty," she said. "I hope so, yes. Ambassadors, embassies, trade, if the talks go well."

"Trade?" Ned asked. "What kind of stuff do you have?"

Kel grinned. She gave a quick twist of her wrist, and a long narrow dagger appeared in her hand, seemingly from out of nowhere.

Except of course it wasn't from out of nowhere. Kel was wearing a gold bracelet — not nearly as ostentatious as the jewelry she'd been wearing on stage at the UN, but also a departure from the stripped-down practicality of Venen-ka. The instant her hand had started to move, a stream of material had flowed out of the bracelet, forming into the dagger in the blink of an eye.

Nanotech. Tony'd been exploring that direction himself these last few months. Given a couple hours, he could have probably rigged up a basic prototype to do the same thing. But he had to admit, Kel's version was very slick.

Another subtle hand motion, and the dagger vanished again.

"That's _awesome_!" Peter said. "Can I try?"

"You can look at it, but it only works for me."

Kel wriggled her wrist out of the bracelet and tossed it over. Ned and Peter both tried it on and did their best to get a dagger out of it, but as promised, nothing happened.

Tony gestured, and Peter slid the bracelet across the coffee table toward him. It was dense — even more so than pure gold would have been. It didn't do a thing in his hands, either.

He tossed it back to Kel. "Cute tech," he said. "What else you got?"

"Peter, you came here in the Spider-Man clothes, yes?" she asked. "Do you have the webs with you?"

"Yeah, sure," he said. "But the last time I tried to web you, you tore a huge chunk of your own skin off and it was disgusting, so…"

"No skin. I promise."

Peter ducked out of the room for a minute and came back with a webshooter on his wrist. Kel stood up and moved away from the furniture.

Tony held up a finger. "While I'm the last person to stand in the way of scientific inquiry, I'd also like to avoid significant structural damage to my apartment if at all possible."

"I promise," Kel said again.

Peter's hand snapped up and a line of webbing flew out.

Kel's right arm came up just as quickly, just like the last time they'd played this scene. But this time she didn't take the webbing on her forearm. The line stopped a few inches away from her, frozen in place by a flare of yellow light.

They paused that way for just a moment. Then a flash lit up the entire length of the webbing and zapped it into nothing.

Peter looked down at his hand like he wasn't sure he was going to find it still attached. "Actually, I think I liked the skin version better."

"I didn't," Kel said.

"Do all your soldiers have those?" Ned asked.

"No," Kel replied. "Too expensive. But it would be very bad, for us and for you, if something happened to me while I'm here. So the _hirethe_ let me use one."

It occurred to Tony that FRIDAY hadn't made a peep about Kel carrying high-tech gear, and she was supposed to keep him informed about such things. That personal shield was undetectable, at least by Earth means. Very interesting.

"New plan," he said, "I'd like to bring you to the compound for a couple hours so that I can take apart every piece of tech you've got and make some notes. Is that all right? Would that be considered impolite?"

"For you to want it, no," Kel said as she took her seat again. "For me to allow it would be considered treason. So no, this isn't the plan."

"Treason?" Ned said. "Isn't that kind of harsh?"

"Does your government like it when people give military secrets to foreign powers?"

Ned blinked a couple times. "I'm not really sure, but when you put it that way, it sounds bad."

"Yes."

It was already pushing four o'clock, and some of them had another appointment that afternoon. "Well," Tony said, and rubbed his hands together. "Treason is as good a note to end on as any. Maybe it's time to wrap things up. We wouldn't want May sending out the National Guard."

"Yeah, I guess we should be heading back," Peter said. "But thanks a lot for having us, Mr. Stark."

"Yeah, it was really great to meet everyone," said Ned. "Even though I can't talk about it and no one would ever believe me if I did."

All right, maybe this was just a little bit mean, but it was also going to be entertaining. "True," Tony said. "And since no one would ever believe you about this either, do you want to say hi to the rest of the gang before you go?"

Ned froze. "The rest of the…"

"FRIDAY, get the compound the line."

"Sure thing, boss."

The lights dimmed and the windows darkened. On the far wall, the screen activated. Steve, Natasha, Sam and Vision were already at the conference table, and Rhodey and Wanda stepped into view a moment later.

(Rhodey… on his feet and walking normally. He still needed the braces — always would — but between Aaron's empathic efforts and a whole lot of rehab and hard work, he'd regained about ninety-five percent mobility without the War Machine armor and full combat capacity with it. Tony would never say this out loud, of course, but he was _so damned proud_ of him.)

He stole a glance at Ned, whose mouth and eyes were three big circles.

"Hey, guys," Natasha said. "Who's our new recruit?"

"Hey, everyone!" Peter said. "This is my friend Ned."

Steve, ever the polite one, said, "Nice to meet you, Ned."

Ned slowly raised his hand and waved. Peter's earlier lesson had stuck, because his palm faced backward.

Peter shot Tony a look. "You're going to do confidential Avenger stuff now, aren't you."

"Yeah, pretty much."

He sighed. "Well, if you need me to help with anything—"

"I know where to find you."

The kids cleared out. Kel switched chairs so that she was facing the screen.

The mood in the room came down several notches.

"I heard in the news about your punishment," Kel said to the crew at the compound. "I wish I could go there, but I don't think the _hirethe_ would like it in the circumstances."

"We get it, don't worry," said Sam. "This isn't the time for you to be rocking the boat."

Steve leaned forward and folded his hands on the table. "I think we all have the same question," he said. "Kel, I realize that you have a duty to your people. But I have to ask: are they dealing with us honestly?"

"In a negotiation, is either side ever completely honest?"

"All right, maybe not, but there's a difference between holding out for the most profitable trade agreement and softening the ground for an invasion. What can you tell us about their motives?"

"If I say everything's fine and we mean exactly what we say, does matter?" she countered. "Because I give the same answer if it's true or if I'm ordered to lie."

"Refusing to answer is also an answer," Natasha said.

Kel exhaled slowly, and didn't respond for a long beat. Tony understood what a wretched position they were putting her in — leveraging her friendship against her sense of duty. But dammit, there were giant red aliens with superior technology and dubious intentions on his planet. If things were about to go south, then Tony _had_ to push for every edge he could get. They all did.

Eventually, Kel said, "Some of you know about the night that I lost my hand. For the ones who don't: it was war. A different war. I and one of my squadron hold off reinforcements, while the other three sneak into the enemy base and disable its defenses. We take the base, later the country. Not long after, the war ends." She gestured with her right arm. "From my team, we lose two out of five, and this. A good price, Tor tells me."

Tony tried not to flinch. God, the way these guys _spent_ their children…

"The part I only told Jean is why the war started, and what happened after," Kel continued. "The planet, Casid, has good weather and land for crops, farm animals. We don't need this for ourselves, of course, but we hold other planets where the populations need food, where the land is more difficult. We use Casid to supply them. Not a new addition. Conquered long ago. Long enough that we pay less attention. Until they rebel. A careful plan, many years, and it works. They throw us off their world, and we fight to take it back. It was much more difficult than most want to admit. The battle, what I did, helped us to win.

"When Casid finally surrenders, most of those who fight are dead. You make this difference, yes? Soldiers and civilians? Mostly civilians are the ones left. They surrender, and after this, we target the twenty-five largest cities, and we execute one in five."

Jean didn't stir, because she'd heard this before. Natasha didn't stir, because she was Natasha. Among the rest of them, there were quite a lot of tightened fists and averted eyes.

"Do you know what a loss of population like this does?" Kel said into the strained silence. "Can you imagine? It broke them." Her head tilted. "For a few generations, at least. Those who survive hate us even more. Eventually, they will try again. Then we fight again, and even more will die."

With careful control, Steve said, "Are you telling us that Earth will end up the same way?"

"No, I tell you that I want it to _stop_!" she snapped. "I want us to do better! To speak with you, to learn from you, to—" She broke off and looked away for a moment. "To take Casid back was Tor's responsibility," she said, more calmly. "And I served, because I believed then that there was no order I would ever refuse. Our clan won. It was finished. Then Kith ordered the executions. Tor was unhappy, but didn't have the position to protest.

"So," she said, "you ask a question, and I don't know the answer. This is the truth. Tor wouldn't tell me anything he didn't want you to know. But I can tell you three things. I think — not to represent j'Brenn, but just as myself, I think that Tor doesn't want another war. I think he will support an alliance, if doing this doesn't damage him. This is the first thing. The second is, to Kith, your planet and your people are nothing. A thing to use, or to destroy once there is no more use. Don't ever forget this."

Steve said, "And the third?"

"I want this to go well," Kel said. "I believe it can. I _hope_ it can. But if it goes badly, now you know how badly it can go."

Rhodey's eyes were lowered in the classic 'texting during the meeting' pose. A moment later, Tony's phone buzzed.

_When we hold war councils, we usually don't invite enemy soldiers_.

_Jumping the gun a little, aren't you? Prevention-of-war council_. _And 'soldier' yes, but I'll believe 'enemy' when I see it._

"You were the one pushing for contact in the first place," Sam said to Kel. "How come this story didn't come up earlier?"

"Because there's no other choice," she replied. "What happened in Venen-ka was too big. We _notice_ you now, and you notice us. Either we talk, or one side or the other attacks. To talk gives you time."

"Time to do what?"

"Increase their perception of our strength," Natasha said.

"Catchy slogan," said Sam. "How?"

Steve said, "That's what we'll have to work on. For the moment, Kel, I'd like you to tell us everything you can about Kith, Bri and Tor. I want to know exactly who we're dealing with."

 


	12. Fourteen Months After

The last of the Brenithi delegates departed the audience chamber, and the tribal leaders followed. T'Challa remained on his throne, with Ramonda at his right hand.

"What do you think, my son?" she asked.

"I think they plan to strip this planet for parts and burn whatever remains." T'Challa turned his palm and flicked a bead, and Okoye's hologram appeared.

"My king?"

"General, escort our guests to the border, and see that they do not return. They will not be permitted to enter Wakanda again."

 


	13. Sixteen Months After

The United States was the last stop in the Breniths' tour. Ross was torn between bristling at the snub and wanting to keep these aliens out of his country entirely.

( _Weapons. Superior technology. That's the goal; that's all that matters_.)

He was uncomfortably aware that he'd been granted a second lease on life through forces largely beyond his control. The portal debacle had been hushed up quite thoroughly, for fear that a scandal would jeopardize the party's chances of keeping the White House later that year. Since the whole thing had officially never happened, Ross had managed to keep his job. But he needed a big win, and soon.

At this remove, his anger had largely subsided. He'd been _right_ , of course — he'd known it then and he knew it now, and if it had been an invading army that had come pouring out of that damned thing, the entire world would have been singing a different tune. It was only by the most absurd accumulation of coincidences and lucky breaks that such an utterly unqualified team had managed to scrape together a victory. How any reasonable person could read the reports from the other side and come away in _favor_ of the Avengers was…

Well. Their moment in the sun was long past. _This_ — a treaty with a spacefaring race, and the enrichments and technological improvements that would result — this would be his vindication and his legacy.

(Not that he had any intention of trusting the Breniths blindly. He simply meant to use them.)

On the evening that the Brenith delegation arrived in DC, there was of course a reception at the White House. This new guy, Conklin, couldn't resist a photo op, even with giant red devils. Ross pasted a polite smile on his face and braced himself to mingle.

The Breniths had made a fumbling attempt at complying with the dress code, though Ross for one wished they hadn't bothered. The three top ones, the _hirethe_ , managed the suit and tie all right (even though Bri was clearly female), but some of the aides showed up in a weird patchwork mix of jackets, trousers and ball gowns that looked utterly absurd.

Oh, and the human-looking one was there. ( _Kel_ , the name was.) She'd done a middling job with the outfit: black suit, white blouse, black leather shoes. It made her look like a caterer, but at least she wasn't wearing a skirt over her pants. She'd toned down the ostentatious jewelry that the Breniths preferred to just a simple gold band on her wrist. There was nothing to be done about the face.

She bothered him the worst of all. At least the other aliens wore it openly. And that wasn't even touching on her role in the goddamned portal incident. She'd flagrantly infiltrated his country and collaborated with subversive elements in order to undermine national security. She needed to be locked in a cell, not welcomed into the White House. But there she stood. She was Tor's daughter, apparently, and one human custom that the Breniths had latched onto straight away was diplomatic immunity. Ross couldn't touch her.

Not yet, anyway.

Oh Lord, and here she came. Ross glanced around the hall, but there was no one sufficiently close by who could provide him with a plausible retreat.

"Good evening, Mister Secretary," Kel said. Her English was always either a little stilted or a little over-rehearsed.

"Good evening," he replied. "How are you enjoying the reception?"

She looked around the East Room with a pensive expression on her face, and gave a nod. "Very pretty," she said. "We are honored to receive your generous hospitality."

That last bit had obviously been a pre-memorized line. Ross was fine with that. He had no desire to go beyond generic niceties. "It's our pleasure. I hope that the talks in the upcoming days lead to a lasting friendship between our peoples." Also a pre-memorized line.

"This is my hope as well." Her head tilted slightly. "I think you know Tony Stark, yes?"

Terrific. Of all the ways she could have gone off-script. "Yes, we've met. Why do you ask?"

"Only curious," Kel said. "Tony never spoke of you." With that, she gave a polite smile and walked away.

_Aliens_.

The real work started once the party was over. The Office of Brenith Affairs had grown considerably, and now included competent adults. Larry and Moe still hovered in the background, fretting over palms and pronouns. Of far more use were the staff who had read the Breniths' historical and cultural documents in detail, and who could advise Ross on how these people thought.

The Breniths were empire builders who respected strength. He could see similarities to ancient Rome: the elite class built their fortunes on foreign conquest, then went into politics. In addition to their homeworld, they maintained authority over some two dozen planets, with a few more under active dispute. Subordinate members were required to support j'Brenn through taxes and tithes of raw materials, and of course their military development was heavily curtailed. But otherwise, their local governments were permitted a reasonable degree of autonomy.

The security concern was obvious. But reading between the lines a little, he could see that the Breniths depended on overwhelming technological superiority to ensure quick victories. The populations they'd conquered had been pastoral, or nomadic. Primitive. Earth wasn't nearly so soft a target. If the Breniths tried to get cute, they'd get their teeth kicked in and fast.

They seemed to know it, too. An alliance was better for all concerned.

Of equal interest were the intelligence reports that had come in on the Breniths' negotiations with various other nations. They were playing it close to the vest in these early stages. No major trade deals had been struck yet, at least so far as any US intelligence agency was aware. The Breniths had visited fifty countries and met with well over a hundred different Foreign Affairs Ministers, and the outcomes had been largely uniform: symbolic Statements of Friendship or some similar thing, and a few preliminary discussions concerning an exchange of diplomatic missions.

That was fine. If a Brenith consulate opened in Suriname, Ross didn't give a shit. Just so long as Brenith weaponry didn't end up in Iran.

The sole exception to the trend was Wakanda. The Brenith delegation had spent less than half a day there, after which T'Challa had pointedly _not_ invited them back. (Not publicly, anyway. It was damned hard to get reliable intel out of that country on any subject.) Ross hoped that the situation was exactly what it looked like: the two groups had failed to hit it off. But he couldn't discount the possibility that their silence was just a cover. It could not, could _not_ be Wakanda that forged the first treaty. That upstart little country with its patronizing _technological outreach_ programs was the _last_ place that needed a powerful new ally. If the Breniths were leaning that way… well, Ross would just have to convince them otherwise.

They were scheduled for two full days of talks. As Secretary of State, Ross would of course be representing US interests. The Breniths didn't have a position dedicated to Foreign Affairs; the three _hirethe_ seemed to share between them the equivalent duties of the entire US Cabinet. They would meet with the President on the second day, but the initial meetings were Ross's. It would be his counsel that shaped their relationship moving forward.

His victory, when a treaty secured the exclusive rights of the US to receive new technologies.

The three _hirethe_ entered the conference room, each ducking their head low so as to clear the door frame. Ross and his advisors stood in response.

"Mister Secretary," Kith said. "A pleasure to speak with you at last."

They gave their formal little nods to each other, then took their seats.

"You've seen a great deal of our world in a relatively short time," Ross said. "Would you be willing to share some of your impressions?"

"I for one found it charming," said Tor, the younger one.

"I was struck by the tremendous diversity of cultures that share a single planet," said the woman, Bri. "Different geographic regions on j'Brenn have their endemic traditions, and of course the planets under our protection retain their own cultures. But for reasons of efficiency, we have found it useful to maintain one central planetary government. That way we can position resources wherever they're most needed to benefit the whole."

"Our young people train for their military service in groups that mix the clans," Tor said. "Although it's true that family loyalty is prized, and… historical rivalries still flare up on occasion—" he gave a slightly sardonic nod to his colleagues "—we are all j'Brenithi. Any one of us could be called upon to defend any other."

"It's a system that works well for us," Bri said, "but over time it has led to a certain global homogeneity."

"So the fact that your one world comprises some two hundred different countries, each with its own particular subdivisions, is novel to us," said Kith. "It's remarkable that you manage to live in relative peace with so many competing interests in such close quarters."

Ross had of course been informed of the contents of all the briefing materials on Earth history that had been released to the Breniths. They'd gotten an overview of the twentieth century, including the World Wars. "As our technology has grown, so too has the terrible cost of large-scale conflict," he replied. "Fortunately, our world's governments have gained the wisdom to resolve their differences through diplomatic channels."

"Of course." Kith paused, and steepled his fingers. "Mister Secretary, my people value forthrightness. It's an inevitable consequence of our empathic sense. Although a first-contact scenario generally calls for discretion, I wonder: may we be forthright with you now?"

_Interesting_. Ross leaned back in his chair and just barely remembered not to spread his hands. "By all means."

Bri said, "You spoke of the wisdom to avoid conflicts between major nation states, and we agree wholeheartedly. Our history, too, contains stories of wars between clans. Brenith lives needlessly spent. We look back on these days with shame."

"In our own history, and from our contact with other planets," Tor continued, "we have noticed a common theme: inequality destabilizes. If one nation has power, resources or technology that it doesn't deserve—"

"Acquired by an accident of geography, for example," said Bri.

"—then that world _will_ be at war with itself, be it covertly or overtly."

Kith said, "Every Brenith begins from a place of equality. It is the core of our social system. The three of us have, over the centuries, acquired precisely such power as our efforts have merited. We rule our territories because we have earned the right to do so."

Ross narrowed his eyes. "And I take it you see something… unearned here on Earth?"

The three of them traded quick glances.

Tor said, "The metal you call vibranium is prized throughout the galaxy for its unique and formidable properties. On inhabited worlds, it typically occurs in trace amounts only."

"Asteroids with large concentrations have been found," Bri said, "but they are exceptionally rare. I've never heard of one striking an inhabited planet."

"Until now, of course," said Tor.

"If one culture — one isolated culture — has access to vibranium in mass quantities, then its technological development will inevitably accelerate. And when that culture, possessed of its unearned and undeserved advantage, finally begins to interact with its neighbors…"

"In short, Mister Secretary," Kith concluded, "you have a Wakanda problem."

Well. This was an unexpected turn. _Maybe you're my kind of people after all_.

 


	14. A Few Days Before

"At the risk of repeating myself, brother, are you sure this is a good idea?"

"Of course I'm sure," Thor said, though he wasn't sure of _that_ so much as he was sure that he didn't care to have the conversation again. "Just don't attempt to conquer them again. Or manipulate their minds. Or kill them for sport."

"Can I kill them for spite?" Loki asked.

"No, you can't."

A rattling of the deck plates presaged Hulk's arrival. He paused before the viewscreen, gave a contemptuous snort, and said, "Puny Earth."

"Perhaps," Thor said. At this distance, the planet did look small.

Midgard. He had fought to protect it many times. (To protect it from Loki, as often as not, but he would deal with that detail later.) Now his people needed safe harbor. He hoped that humanity would be willing to offer their aid in turn.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned...


End file.
